Representations of higher education in fiction-based sources contribute to forming public perceptions of academia, and so are a form of public pedagogy. Within popular culture representations, understandings of academics are constructed using particular tropes which build shared meanings of the profession. Conferences are one of these tropes and…

Across the contemporary global higher education sector, there is an increased focus on gender and the academic profession, particularly inequalities. Previous studies construct a clear picture of the academy as an unfriendly profession for women, particularly highlighting the challenge to 'belong'. A growing body of literature demonstrates how…

This article explores how academics with caring responsibilities negotiate the mobility imperative, with specific reference to attending conferences. We argue that, in the neoliberal and 'careless' context of higher education, negotiating conflicting identities of academic and carer are fraught with tensions for carers as they try to reconcile the…

Conferences are key sites for the development of academic careers; however multiple studies have shown that conferences are exclusionary on the basis of gender and other axes of social disadvantage. This study focuses on India and as such also incorporates caste as an axis of privilege and disadvantage in relation to access to conferences.…

The overarching argument made in this article is twofold. Firstly, academic conferences are posited as sites for higher education research. Secondly, the well-recognised emotional and social processes of conferences are used to make space at the boundaries of higher education research for psychosocial analysis. The article theorises conferences in…

This article is a review approached by the authors as a writing experiment of two recent gatherings where queer theory and Higher Education (HE) Studies met: "The Queerly Theorising Higher Education and Academia: Interdisciplinary Conversations" symposium held at the University College London (UCL), Institute of Education (IOE), (London,…