ABSTRACT
When scholars critique the exploitation of traumatic conditions, they generally focus on international development agencies that advertise traumatic stories and historical sites of violence to increase charitable giving. Our chapter explores how such exploitation strategies are extended to international higher education institutions. We criticise diversity workshops and scholarship essays that exploit students’ traumatic stories and tokenise the very students it supports. The purpose is to describe how sharing traumatic stories in university spaces negatively impacts queer, trans (transgender), Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (QT/BIPOC) students. We use Martin’s Speaking for Ourselves Action Research (SOAR) design that begins with central questions answered by co-authors, then coded, and finally analysed collaboratively. We found that QT/BIPOC students critique university diversity spaces for essentialising them. We argue that trauma tourism exists in higher education’s diversity workshops and scholarships. We suggest ways that universities disrupt tokenisation by honouring, instead, minoritised students’ cultural wealth.
