As an Iranian academic, I'm fed up of being asked to focus on poverty and oppression | Sadaf Javdani

“If you decide to stay in Europe and enjoy your freedom here instead of going back, nothing will change. So why don’t you consider going back to your country?”

These weren’t the racist remarks of a stranger or acquaintance, but an anthropology programme director at a German university whom I was meeting to discuss my postdoctoral proposal. I wanted to research material and sensory perceptions of home, in a way that was unrelated to immigration or asylum.

“Instead of working on your current topic,” the professor continued, “why don’t you base your research on why Iranians remain in Germany in search of freedom and safety? Some 50 years ago, our women fought for their rights – and if we had escaped our country then, like you did, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

I was bewildered. Why was I asked to justify my own presence in Germany? Who was this professor to judge the form of resistance that I and other Iranians had chosen? Even more alarming was the implication that there were specific expectations for the kinds of knowledge that I, as an Iranian woman, should produce.

I didn’t get the approval letter I needed from the professor that day. Instead I was given an “insider tip” that my research project would probably be evaluated by old-fashioned white men, who would likely be fascinated and impressed by cliches about a woman’s struggles in the Middle East. My research topic was deemed undesirable: how a kitchen shapes gender roles is not as sexy as a woman’s testament against her hijab. It lacked exotic charm, and as such was reserved for the white scholar – or, as my professor put it, for “all other students who could just as well work on such topics”.

I left Iran to pursue an academic career where I could have better access to knowledge and collaborate with international scholars. Instead, I feel increasingly trapped in Germany. My political identity defines my role as a scholar, even in the seemingly democratic, liberated environment of academia.

Projects which depict an oppressed, exotic other – for instance, through examinations of topics such as physical violence in Islamic rituals or the persecution of women in the middle east – tend to be well-received by lecturers and students. But these projects play into deeply problematic expectations of colonial narrative. My friends have joked that I should take my camera to a village and film a strange ritual, and my career would be solid as a rock.

It’s not just academia where the colonial gaze drives how we work. Colleagues in the film industry have had work re-edited because they did not represent the narratives of poverty and oppression that production companies wanted. One producer urged a director to cut scenes from a documentary about the struggles of female musicians in Iran because it represented women in a “free” and “progressive” way. Another colleague was advised to represent their protagonists in a more desperate state to get funding for the work. As a result, alternative narratives are marginalised since they do not conform to western expectations of what a film from a non-western country should represent.

I don’t deny that endemic suffering exists in certain parts of the world. But I believe that repeatedly characterising national states, races or religions as dangerous or unsafe leads to the negative assumptions which drive international attitudes and policy-making.

Throughout my decade-long career, I have been repeatedly advised to focus on themes that are exotic in the eyes of reviewers. To secure an academic position or funding for projects, I have to investigate hijabs, censorship, or being a person of colour.

One of the reasons I entered academia and pursued anthropology was to work free from colonial presumptions. Instead I have found myself feeling intellectually crippled. I often rage at the fact that I will always feel locked into a projection of someone’s worldview, and that even the very places in which we supposedly produce new knowledge are tainted by our uncritical acceptance of this western, colonial perspective. But for now, I don’t have any options but to subvert this approach, and establish my own.