ODD ONE: “I still feel the gap” — Dr. George Asiamah on Battling “Imposter Syndrome” as the Only African fellow

There is a moment at Oxford when Dr. George Asiamah can feel the difference. It is not always in the classroom. It is not necessarily in the corridors. Sometimes, it happens over dinner.

Around the table are academics whose names, institutions and careers can read like a roll call of the world’s most prestigious universities.

“I’m from Oxford.” “I’m from Cambridge.” “I’m from Harvard.”

And then there is Asiamah.

An academic and political economist who has travelled from a village school in Ghana to the University of Oxford, he says that, despite his achievements, there are moments when he still feels like the outsider.

“Oxford is in a different league,” he said. “You sit at dinner tables, and it feels like you are the odd one.”

According to Dr. Asiamah, being the “odd one” is not a new experience. In fact, it has followed him throughout his life.

Today, he serves as a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Exeter College, Oxford, where he teaches politics, philosophy and economics.

By his own account, he is the only African fellow among the college’s staff.

“As a fellow, I’m the only African,” he said. “We have a few Africans there, but then, as a fellow, I’m the only one.”

It is an achievement that might appear glamorous from the outside. But for Asiamah, it comes with a peculiar pressure.

Being the only African in the room, he explained, can make you feel as though you are constantly being watched and constantly expected to prove why you deserve to be there.

“It makes you especially with the recent news all eyes on you,” he said.

“What’s so exceptional about you, that you are the only Black person or the only African here? That alone puts some sort of pressure on you”, he added

That pressure became particularly personal when the issue of Black academics and the burden of representation came into sharp focus.

Asiamah had written a Facebook post about the challenges minority academics face in elite universities. The post gained attention and eventually caught the interest of BBC producers, who invited him for an interview.

The interview was scheduled for a Monday.

That same evening, news broke of the death of Professor Jason Arday, the Cambridge sociologist and prominent scholar of race and inequality, who had faced intense online abuse.

Dr. Asiamah decided not to go on air.

“I needed to decline the offer,” he said. “It wasn’t the right moment… it became so sensitive for me to still continue with that interview.”

But beneath the public conversation about representation lies a quieter battle, one Asiamah says many minority academics may recognize.

Imposter syndrome.

Even after earning master’s degrees from two Russell Group universities and completing a PhD at the University of Sheffield, Asiamah admits that he has sometimes wondered whether his presence in an elite institution is entirely because of merit.

“There’s also some challenge of the imposter syndrome,” he said.

“Do I really belong here?”

His concern is tied to the growing emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion in universities.

“If most universities are implementing diversity, equity and inclusion policy, you wonder whether you are here because you deserve it, or because of that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion(DEI) policy,” he said.

“Maybe they just want a Black person to be within the college.”

It is a brutally honest admission from a man who has already achieved what many could only dream of.

But perhaps that is precisely what makes his story compelling because Dr. Asiamah’s journey to Oxford was never a straight road. It was the “back route”.

From a village school without the advantages associated with elite education, he made his way to KNUST, then Belfast, Sheffield and eventually Oxford.

At every stage, he found himself entering spaces where people like him were few.

“For me, my journey has always been like that,” he said. “I’m always the odd one out. The back route.”

Yet, sitting in Oxford today, he sees those difficult years differently.

The setbacks, the uncertainty and the feeling of being out of place were not wasted years.

“They are no longer news to me,” he said. “That is how I’ve come to realize that all those were not wasted years at all.”

And perhaps that is the lesson hidden inside his Oxford story.

Sometimes, the person who feels like the odd one in the room is there precisely because they travelled a road nobody expected them to take.