Possessions

Possessions by Davina Quinlivan explores a deeply personal and academic journey:

"I was so thirsty for the prize of academia, so thrilled to defy the fates, that I suffocated my own history and culture, my Burmese heritage and my mother's language. By doing this, I also possessed my ancestors and made them dance to the tune of Imperialism. How could I be so wrong?"

After two decades of academic research and undergraduate teaching, Davina Quinlivan, alongside the world of university education, were approaching crisis. Teaching online and ticking boxes for other people's diversity criteria, they remained stuck, like so many others, in a cycle of fixed term contracts. Yet, as a child of Anglo-Burmese parents growing up in West London, academia promised a way out—something better.

This is her powerful, compelling story of fragmenting and rebuilding from the inside out, one that is filled with the voices of both Burma and Southall. Haunted by the ghosts of colonialism, Davina Quinlivan beautifully lays bare our blind spots as we grapple with decolonisation and the hypocrisies within our institutions of education.