The neoliberalization of higher education in western countries has led to work intensification, projectification, and work-life balance issues for academics. This article draws on interviews with Digital Humanities practitioners in higher education conducted in 2017-2018 in three Nordic countries to introduce the concept of the 'work-work…

Throughout the world of higher education, universities and colleges are reconceptualizing how their institutions are organized, especially in terms of faculty size related to overall programming. As adjunct rates increase and faculty positions are eliminated, many programs may be reduced to a single faculty lead. Yet, single faculty member…

Prior studies have reported high levels of PhD stress resulting in exhaustion and cynicism related to negative institutional factors. Yet, we know little of the possible influence of personal lives on exhaustion/cynicism. This mixed-methods study examines the interrelation. We drew on exhaustion, cynicism, life-work relation scales and free-write…

This study describes how parents in academia negotiate their professional identity in relation to dominant discourses of science as a calling. Based on in-depth interviews with men and women academics in a Dutch university, five discursive strategies are distilled that reconcile contradictory claims of academia and parenthood. Parents are…

The 'publish or perish' system has been widespread in the global higher education sector to incentivize academic performance. How the system affects academics in non-western countries has received scant attention. This research studies the relationship between different types of employment contracts, work pressure and the childbearing decisions of…

The study examines the personal, social, and organizational barriers facing women in university leadership positions in South Asia, building on the cases of Malaysia and Bangladesh. We discussed the topic through the lens of interactionist feminist theory. Semi-structured interviews with 20 female deans from 12 public universities in Malaysia and…

Against a background of Bologna process goals to improve employment prospects for PhD graduates, and the crisis of precarious employment conditions and prospects afflicting postdoctoral researchers -- hitherto postdocs, the OECD ([2021], "Reducing the Precarity of Academic Research Careers." In "OECD Science, Technology and Industry…

Academic work environments are becoming progressively more digitalised and focused on performativity and commodification, increasing the potential to force an unwanted merge of the boundary between work and non-work domains. This study aimed to explore academic wellbeing and the role played by factors related to work-life merge. Data were…

This paper explores the experiences and perceptions of parent academics and their colleagues, and argues that in the absence of institutional support and guidance, self and peer assessment of academic identity in relation to performance becomes a measure against which academics assess their own academic careers and the academic careers of others.…

Research has shown that a tenure track incorporates both commitment and control aspects: the career system offers junior-level academics long-term job prospects, but subjects them to performance control. This study complements existing research on tenure track positions, which has mostly been conducted in northern America. Universities in Finland…

In this paper, academic identity work is explored through an examination of its portrayal in a work of narrative fiction using a conceptual tool from literary studies. It is found that such an approach provides insights that would otherwise be difficult to uncover by more conventional methods. The analysis reveals academic identity work as an…

This study focus is on career boundaries to graduate employability in a crisis economy. The underlying theoretical framework focus on career boundary theory and perceived employability. The empirical findings are based on a small-scale qualitative study that includes five focus group interviews conducted with Portuguese graduates of both genders…

Recent decades have seen the evolution of UK business schools into international mass education providers. This transformation has developed against a background of institutional changes that jeopardise work conditions in academia. As few studies have examined the relationships between organisational, social and psychological aspects of academic…

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 academics from various disciplines in both UK and Chinese universities, this comparative study aims to offer new insights into how academics in British and Chinese universities maintained work-life balance and the similarities and differences experienced between academics of both countries. This study finds…

This article discusses the persistence of a gender gap among university-based academics, despite the development of equity policies and "family-friendly" initiatives. Over four decades of research are reviewed from the liberal states of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA and the UK, including my own qualitative interviews in Canada in…