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This book was not borne out of strong ideological feminist ideas or with grandeur aims to change the system. It was conceived as a celebration of the many academic women who have contributed and continue to contribute to make academia a home where high quality and impactful scholarship is observed, where teaching and learning is celebrated, and leadership and service to the discipline is honored. It is a celebration of how far women have come and continue to thrive in the pursuit of research, education, and scholarship. In this concluding chapter, I synthesize the key insights and take-aways from each chapter – academic stories and narratives that can support the modern female academic to energize, motivate, inspire, and thrive in academia.

The unpredictability of the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world and now, over a year later, people are still coming to terms with the mayhem caused by this deadly virus. To curb the spread of the coronavirus, the South African government instituted stringent lockdown measures such as intermittent closure of universities. To resume the academic programme, universities advocated the transition from face-to-face teaching to online teaching. This posed serious challenges for academic staff who were compelled to make sacrifices so that students could receive quality education. This chapter explored the resilience of three academics who made paradigm shifts to their teaching practice.

For many centuries, women academics have thrived regardless of the system, the rules, as well as the challenges and barriers in academia. Drawing on a rich array of research literature on leadership, management, and gender studies, and illuminated through semi-true biographies of academics, this chapter provides a strengths-based perspective that can help empower women academics to thrive in academia.

The increase in college students’ mental health struggles has led to a 30–40% increase in college counseling center visits between 2009 and 2015 (Center for Collegiate Mental Health, 2018). Traditional responses to this problem have focused mainly on increasing therapy staffs, but this approach has reached a tipping point due to shrinking budgets. In this piece, we advocate for widening the lens on the college student mental health issue to focus more on the systems that can mitigate or exacerbate students’ wellbeing. More specifically, we propose an updated version of in loco parentis as a model that could potentially decrease alienation and encourage the kinds of meaningful connections young people need to thrive.

This chapter begins with a short story based on a personal memory which is about how the interplay between ‘human’ and ‘technology’ may indicate a level of mastery in knowing in practice. The story suggests that ‘human’ and ‘technology’ can perform tasks that could not be performed by only one element. I turn to discuss how papers could be designed to be accepted as ‘scientific’, providing examples of the use of stories in research and explicitly sets ‘story’ in relation to Dewey’s ‘art as experience’. Dewey states that we should pay attention to what a product does with and in experience; something that is relevant for scientific products. Different forms of writing contribute knowledge that lie outside the strict framework of scientific articles. Notwithstanding this, a story needs a framework of some sort if it is to connect to a scientific discourse. To be able to write differently, we need arenas for publications that are accepted within the evaluation systems that govern academic careers. This matters to researchers’ careers and to the relevance of the knowledge that is developed in the scientific community and the relevance of universities as ‘knowledge providers’. If the formal structure of an academic article determines what researchers can say, then the scope of scientific knowledge will be limited. The inclusion of stories can stimulate dialogue, potentially link creative and logical thinking together, and bridge theoretical and practical knowledge. We need stories to heal and unite separated life worlds.

This chapter was inspired by and tells of a conference experience. Most “ordinary” academics like me go to a varying number of conferences annually and regularly share stories of these experiences with our colleagues. The conference stories are about a central set of practices in academic work, at least for active researchers. However, it is difficult to find studies of conference practices (for exceptions, see Radford, 2000), and, in particular, their broader meanings to both organizers and participants.

This chapter focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on academic leadership. Interview data from 13 academic leaders (department chairs, deans, vice-rectors) at two Turkish universities are used to voice their experiences. Two main themes emerged from the analysis: the challenges encountered in an era or uncertainty, and the experience of being in between balance and resilience. While all of the leaders interviewed got through the uncertainty produced by the pandemic, and some thrived, it is clear that universities need to do more to prepare themselves and their leaders for future crises.

Academics around the world continue to demonstrate strength to overcome the initial hurdles of COVID-19. But resilient academics show sustained engagement despite the continuing changes and uncertainties during these ongoing challenging times. In this concluding chapter, we synthesise the key takeaways from each chapter – narratives that may support academics at every career stage to feel energised, motivated and inspired in times of adversity. We share critical insights and strategies that may assist academics forge ahead in a post-pandemic world. In doing so, we advance the Academic Resilience Model that may help academics – and institutions – thrive in times of adversity.