For women’s history month SAGE Publishing hosted on event to highlight the experiences and obstacles of being an early career researcher as a woman of colour. The hour-long discussion helped to uncover the layers of difficulty that come with being a gendered and racialised subject in an environment that is frequently dismissive of these struggles. Sophie Chamas, Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS began by highlighting the difficulty of being a politicised subject that cannot feasibly separate herself from the issues she’s invested in, creating a tension between the researcher and the research. Surer Mohamed, final-year PHD candidate at the University of Cambridge spoke about how being a woman of colour in academia comes with a silent burden of care and expectation of doing the work of undoing institutional problems. Invisible labour was a running theme throughout the talk, especially in the context of early career research where there is a general understanding that a lot of work needs to be done for free in order to advance your career.