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OBJECTIVE--In the Diabetes Therapy Utilization: Researching Changes in A1C, Weight and Other Factors Through Intervention with Exenatide Once Weekly (DURATION-1) study, the safety and efficacy of 30 weeks of treatment [...]

ABSTRACTThis article critically interrogates East Asian academics’ positional identities in UK universities, internationalisation and diversification against the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework. Contemporary UK policy promoting racial equality and diversity is often over-generalised, while the critical race theory-based literature has focused on hegemonic notions of ‘white privilege’. Neither discourse provides an adequate, comparative perspective of power relations within diverse racial and ethnic groups. In advancing this perspective, the article compares the experiences of two groups of East Asian academics working in UK universities. One group is foreign-born but has strong British identities following their English élite education. The other group came to the UK for postgraduate studies and/or chose to work in Britain. The paper changes the picture of a static, black and white perspective in the BME policy and CRT literature by offering a dynamic, fluid discourse involving East Asian academics’ narratives of their positional identities and choices.

The central theme of this paper is contradictions: the ways in which official agendas of internationalisation in higher education are disturbed by the principles of inclusion and exclusion in the local context of university academic culture. The case of South Korea shows how the national policies for the inter-nationalisation of higher education are translated into local cultural practice inside academe: What are the ‘positions’ of foreign and female academics in the specific national university context? How are they constructed by official policies of inter-nationalisation? How are they experienced by individuals to form new reflexive identities? The paper offers an illustrative analysis of the positioned and positionalidentities of foreign and female academics and the boundariesof inclusion and exclusion drawn around their identities. This exploratory study is aimed at future research agendas for a larger theoretical study on internationally mobile academics in different social contexts.