This essay offers provocations on the possibilities and challenges of advancing ‘epistemic justice’ in urban research, with particular care for the growing ‘academic precariat’. We explore some of the institutional barriers and possibilities of doing collaborative justice-oriented work within urban and built environment scholarship, especially for those fixed-term, early career, casual academics, independent scholars or those with career breaks. To do so, we refer to and reframe three concepts that are core within academic institutions: ethics, engagement and excellence. We explore the potentials of the urban as a site of political struggles, the projective potential of urban disciplines and the university as an urban actor to offer our intentionalities—alternative pathways—through which we can reclaim the radical role of the university towards an emancipatory urban praxis.