While academia is meant to be meritocratic, there are unspoken rules that people from other countries struggle to navigate. 

My anthropological research focused on the subtle prejudices scholars from the Global South face when they work in the US or with US researchers. US-born scholars from minority backgrounds, including first-gen academics from working class families, deal with similar obstacles.
 
Between 2008-12 ​I conducted an ethnography of a transnational academic community, Andean Archaeology. My fieldwork was carried out at the places where the community was created: on archaeological excavations in Bolivia; in classrooms and anthropology departments at four universities in the US, Canada, & Chile; and at national & international conferences across North and South America.

After completing my PhD I worked in student support, in higher education administration, and adjunted. I started a historical research project looking at the plight of refugee scholars during the C20th. And I held a postdoc position, during which I was involved in an attempt to create an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers from Mexico and the US, that avoided the power dynamics I'd identified in my doctoral research.  

In total I spent 16 years studying the structure and culture of higher education from many different angles. I lived the life of an academic as well. But by 2019 I was ready to try a different approach. I decided to stop studying and writing about the problems I saw, and instead retrain as a mental health therapist so I could directly help the individuals affected. I am now a licensed mental health professional in the State of Illinois, where I specialize in working with academics and immigrants.