Navigating the margins: intersectional leadership, racialised labour and the politics of belonging in UK higher education

Purpose This paper aims to examine how intersectional leadership is practised and constrained within UK higher education through the lived experience and critical autoethnographic reflection of a racialised woman equity leader. Drawing on critical race theory (CRT), Black feminist thought, decolonial pedagogy and the concept of the racial regime, it interrogates how whiteness, patriarchy, capitalism and social class co-produce the conditions under which racialised women lead, belong and labour in the academy. Conceptually, the article advances a Relational, Intersectional Leadership Model that integrates equity practice, reflexivity and systemic change, anchored in relational accountability and belonging as structural rather than merely affective. Design/methodology/approach Methodologically, the paper employs critical autoethnographic reflection, treating poetry, leadership narratives and institutional encounters as data to theorise intersectional leadership from the margins. In contrast to compliance-driven Equity, Diversity and Inclusion approaches and contradiction-closing interventions, the paper argues that intersectional leadership offers both a diagnostic lens on structural inequality and a transformative praxis for reimagining leadership as collective, justice-oriented and rooted in care, solidarity and epistemic justice. Findings It further introduces the notions of Misogynislam, the racialised and gendered targeting of Muslim and “Muslim-appearing” women and the Racial Navigator, the racialised leader who must continually plot routes through hostile institutional architectures. It concludes by outlining implications for leadership development, governance and future research that seek to move beyond representational diversity toward relational, race-literate and intersectional leadership in UK higher education. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper offers original conceptual and methodological contributions by advancing a Relational, Intersectional Leadership Model grounded in CRT, Black feminist thought and decolonial praxis and by introducing two new concepts – Misogynislam and the racial navigator. Through critical autoethnography, it provides rare, insider insight into the racialised labour of equity leadership and exposes how whiteness, patriarchy and capitalism shape belonging in the academy. The inclusion of a poem deepens the epistemic and affective dimensions of the work, demonstrating the value of creative scholarship for illuminating structural violence, honouring lived experience and expanding how leadership knowledge can be produced and understood.