Doctoral supervisor’s views on building a Research Identity

Literature confirms that building a research identity forms the basis of good supervision. Also confirms that, it takes time and commitment, but every good supervisor needs to be a scholar in their field. The study’s main interest was quality value added to doctoral candidates as established researchers and how supervisors’ research identity transferred to doctoral students? In addition, the researcher wished to establish the supervisor’s responses to research identity and application thereof. A qualitative research study was used with a purposive sample of 10 doctoral supervisors at the time of research, were designated using knowledgeable sampling technique. Bourdieu’s homo academicus theory of cultural capital was used to frame academic identities of fit for purpose. Open-ended questionnaire was used to collect data from the participants. The data collected was analyzed using thematic analysis. This study reveals that active participation of supervisors in research is critical, as that is how good quality in research can be measured. The findings also revealed that role and responsibilities of doctoral supervisors could be derived from taking part in research and willingness to learn from others open for training, collaborations and supervision developments in order to develop their research identity in academia.

The incentivisation of English medium instruction in Chinese universities: policy misfires and misalignments

The growth of English medium instruction (EMI) in higher education in China over the past two decades has been promoted via implicit and explicit policies that aim to incentivise activities associated with the creation of English-taught courses and programs. This study investigates the components of such incentivisation schemes. It also explores how incentivisation policies are being implemented by policy arbiters, EMI programme directors, and EMI teachers. Data were collected from two sources: 93 institutional policy documents on EMI provision collected from 63 Chinese universities, and 26 interviews with senior university staff at a selection of eight Chinese universities. Results revealed that incentivisation policies focused on increased workload weighting for EMI courses, greater access to career development opportunities for teachers, increased monetary rewards, and dedicated financial support for creating and delivering courses. A comparison of policy and practice revealed areas of policy misfires and misalignments. EMI teachers considered the workload incentives insufficient and were not primarily motivated by financial rewards, but rather chose to teach in English for professional, academic, and personal intrinsic rewards; many viewed EMI at the core of their teacher-researcher academic identities. The paper concludes with recommendations to better align incentivisation policies with the driving forces attached to EMI in China.

The impact of mergers in higher education on micro-level processes – a literature review

Amidst increased research on mergers in higher education, studies addressing micro level processes are scarce and fragmented across disciplines: our aim is to systematically review existing studies, providing implications for research and practice. We grouped 21 studies from different countries under four themes: academic identity and self-image; cultural integration; staff reaction; teaching and research. Timing, status of institutions and staff, and disciplinary cultures apparently affect post-merger micro-level processes. Policy reforms might indirectly address micro-level processes following a merger, for example in a change of academic identities. Few studies investigated the impact of mergers on teaching and research activities. Studying merger consequences for academic core activities is complex, requiring a longer perspective involving students, staff and quantitative indicators. Longitudinal design in further studies might investigate changes from different angles and for different staff groups and students, exploring country differences in micro-level processes, applying a comparative design. Despite limitations, our review might inform the planning of merger processes regarding reactions at micro level.

#MeToo: (Re)Shaping sexual research pedagogies through a new material autoethnographic analysis

Historically (and presently), ‘Western’ academic spaces have prioritized certain traits and bodies based on problematic, hierarchical dichotomies. These dichotomies influence ideas around normativity and superiority; for example, truth and reason were historically conceptualized as mutually exclusive from, and of more value than, emotional, subjective experiences, and the body. Such dichotomies perpetuate systems of power and oppression, and they overlook real people who could be in the room who have experienced the ‘abstract’ topic being discussed. In this paper, I extend a call for a shift to embodied pedagogical approaches to the field of human sexuality—a field that comes with heightened risks and opportunities given the nature of topics covered. Through exploring my own experiences within sexuality classrooms at various stages of my academic career, I interrogate the ‘safety’ of distancing academic identities from embodied knowledge; who is actually protected by these practices; who is more at risk? A shift in pedagogical approaches may allow students (and educators) to better engage with, and appreciate, the importance of confronting knowledge that may be emotionally challenging.

Academic identities and sense of place: A collaborative autoethnography in the neoliberal university

Neoliberalism, precarious jobs, and control of work have multiple effects on academic identities as our allegiances to valued social groups and our connections to meaningful locations are challenged. While identities in neoliberal universities have received increasing research attention, sense of place has passed unnoticed in the literature. We engage with collaborative autoethnography and contribute to the literature in two ways. First, we show that while academic identities are put into motion by the neoliberal regime, they are constructed through mundane constellations of places and social entities. Second, we elucidate how academic identities today are characterized by restlessness and how academics use place and time to find meaning for themselves and their work. We propose a form of criticism to neoliberal universities that is sensitive to positionalities and places and offer ideas on how to build shared understandings that help us survive in the face of neoliberal standards of academic “excellence.”

Emerging Neoliberal Academic Identities: Looking Beyond Homo economicus

In this article, I deal with the notion of ‘academic identity’ holistically, seeking to bring together the teacher and researcher roles of academics in the neoliberal university. The article begins from the perspective of early-career academics who occupy the majority of fixed-term, teaching-only contracts in Higher Education, arguing that such casualisation of academic labour entrenches the role of the academic as Homo economicus. Drawing on the work of Foucault, I demonstrate how a neoliberal governmentality is now not only exerted upon academics from without, but increasingly they are subjecting themselves to the logic of efficiency and effectiveness too. The neoliberal governmentality of the university thus influences and shapes academic subjectivities, such that what it means to be an academic is confined to this marketised logic. Despite the pressures placed on academics to ‘produce’ measurable outputs and demonstrate their impact, I argue that moving beyond Homo economicus is possible, arguing instead for a re-claiming of ‘the academic’ as Homo academicus. The idea of Homo academicus can only be supported when three conditions are present: collegiality is afforded greater importance than competition; the discourses of ‘productivity’ and performativity are balanced against simply ‘doing good work well’ (Pirrie in Virtue and the quiet art of scholarship, Routledge, London, 2019), and; academics are mindful to practice the ‘quieter’ intellectual virtues, including the virtue of ‘unknowing’ (Smith in J Philos Educ 50:272–284, 2016).

Disciplining Academic Identities: Boundaries and Identity Work among Arts and Sciences Faculty

A large body of scholarship shows that even as interdisciplinarity gains recognition, the disciplines remain core aspects of the organization of modern academic life in the United States. We do not yet know, however, how faculty draw on disciplines and disciplinary boundaries in their academic identity work or how they construct their academic identities and convey those identities to others. We explore these questions through 100 in-depth interviews with faculty from 34 arts and sciences disciplines at a private, Research 1 university. We show how boundary battles over symbolic resources associated with disciplines contribute to faculty identity work. We identify four types of identity work arts and sciences faculty use: foregrounding disciplinarity, resisting disciplinary identities associated with administratively assigned departmental homes, emphasizing scientist identities, and pursuing question-oriented identities. Finally, we show how beliefs that disciplinary differences reflect underlying distinctions between “kinds of people” shore up the importance of disciplinary divisions, even in a university setting that provides material support for interdisciplinarity. We use these results to argue that even in institutional settings that provide support for interdisciplinarity, disciplinary boundaries may remain central by providing important symbolic resources.