This is the story of a scientist who never chose to be an academic, only to fall in love with research. In The Hyphenated Academic, Aymen I. Idris, P.hD. traces his unlikely path from a childhood epiphany in a Sudanese Sufi ceremony to pioneering discoveries in cannabinoid research, the founding of a university spin-out company, and a career crowned by papers in Nature and Cell. But the very institution that elevated him also drove him away. Disillusioned by the grant-capture mill, the new academic aristocracy, the tyranny of metrics, and the unintended consequences of equity, diversity, and inclusion policies, he staged an escape, not into silence, but into a global experiment on prejudice itself.

Part memoir, part polemic, and part spiritual autobiography, this book oscillates between the laboratory and the Sufi courtyard, between the relentless pressure to publish and the quiet wisdom of a grandmother's stories. It delivers an unflinching insider's critique of contemporary higher education while examining the hyphenated identity of the migrant scholar—caught between faith and secularism, haunted by the unspoken hierarchies of accent and gesture, and searching for intellectual sovereignty and belonging in an institution that often mistakes conformity for excellence.

Written with candour, wit, and unflinching honesty, The Hyphenated Academic speaks to every student who has felt like an imposter, every researcher whose curiosity is being strangled by bureaucracy, and every idealist who has ever loved an institution that did not love them back. It is, above all, a testament to the refusal to be reduced to a box, a label, or a single story.

I am a pharmacologist and basic science researcher specialising in the design, preclinical testing, and commercialisation of novel, inexpensive small molecules with anti-inflammatory, anti-metastatic, and/or anti-osteolytic properties. Beyond the lab, I am a data science enthusiast. In 2021, I founded the Africa in Science (AiS) Think-tank, which monitors the scientific output of Africa-based institutions to identify under-researched and neglected topics across the continent. Within the scientific community, I am a committed advocate for early-career researchers. In 2019, I founded and served as the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of www.HubLE.org, the official Learning and Sharing Environment of the IFMRS. As an activist scientist, I am also deeply interested in the influence of culture on academics, particularly those with "hyphenated" or intersecting identities.