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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2025
Counternarrative storytelling is an invaluable technique when centering overlooked voices and experiences of race and gender, as seen within theoretical frameworks such as Critical Race Theory and Black feminist epistemology. Additionally, the oral traditions of many African diasporic cultures necessitates storytelling as a crucial component of the sharing and passing down of practices, beliefs and teachings. Storytelling is an art form that can be used as entertainment, within music and in writing. To honour the power and beauty of this custom, I will utilise storytelling to describe what completing a PhD felt like to me.
Learning how to swim
Completing a PhD is akin to being a weak swimmer but being thrown into the deep end of a huge pool, having to learn, right there and then, how to keep yourself from drowning and to eventually be able to swim to the other end. You might have people on the sides of the pool in the stands, let us say friends or family members, who love you and are just as frightened as you, watching you struggle in the water. They will try to offer assistance by shouting out to you to ‘keep moving your arms and legs’, but they will never be able to understand how deep the water is or just how hard you are trying to keep moving your arms and legs!
Gaining a PhD denotes being part of a tiny group of 1.4 per cent of 25– 64- year- olds in the UK that have one (Coldron, 2019). Unfortunately, this tiny percentage has not been broken down further to illustrate what this looks like when accounting for specific characteristics like race, gender and/ or social class. But to gain an idea about how many Black British students progress to studying at PhD level, data from United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) is useful. According to UKRI data, between 2016 and 2019, ‘of the total 19,868 PhD funded studentships awarded by UKRI research councils collectively, 245 (1.2 per cent) were awarded to Black or Black Mixed students, with just 30 of those being from Black Caribbean backgrounds’ (Williams et al., 2019).
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