Studying Islamophobia in France and England: My Journey between Despair and Success

This article attempts to discuss the circulations, confrontations, and differentiated receptions of knowledge between academic and political spaces based on my experience and professional career in the two different contexts of French and Anglo-American universities. By detailing how my research on the geographies of inequality and Islamophobia developed, I offer here a critical reflection on my positionality as a French Muslim geographer from racial and ethnic minorities evolving in postcolonial, elitist, and exclusionary spaces. These exclusionary practices raise questions about the state of academia and the functioning of scientific research on an international scale, and particularly in France. Greater inclusion within social science disciplines of ethnic and religious minorities working on themes that directly concern them, such as racism, discrimination, inequalities, and especially Islamophobia, is therefore necessary because it would ensure the creative development of our contemporary academic worlds.