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The current book chapter seeks to respond to the existing literature on early career researchers, using an autoethnographic approach to further unravel the crossroads of identity formation, research politics, and successful promotion through the eyes of early career researchers. Combining autobiography and ethnography, we systematically analyze our own experiences to make sense of wider social and political practices. Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2010) remind us that autoethnography is not to be dismissed as a form of self-therapy but is to be presented in a rigorous manner as other research forms by carefully justifying the data sources and techniques, analyzing the data and crafting the findings. Our sources were both found texts (e.g., university policies) and created texts (our journal entries and personal communications). Using analytic techniques such as highlighting critical incidents or epiphanies, we structured coherent narratives to illuminate the complexity and uncertainty of the lives of early career academics. This chapter’s focus on early career researcher experiences makes poignant commentary on neoliberalism’s impact on and within higher education. The chapter concludes with the authors’ reflections on the dilemmas of academic and research choices made within the limitations of institutional structures, processes, and systems that shape career trajectories.

Latin America is a vast and diverse continent. Not only are there dozens of different nations, but each country is also marked by stark regional differences. Nevertheless, the academic profession in all countries shares some common features that are important for an emerging scholar to know. Here, maybe more than in other parts of the world, early career decisions have significant and long-lasting consequences. This chapter presents the Latin American academic context focusing on the academic career ladder, as it is organized both in the public and the private sectors, exploring the many sources of tension and challenges, as well as opportunities for early career scholars in the region.

Numerous studies have explored international students' and graduates' experiences around the globe but with less emphasis on exploring international academics' experiences. Internationalisation of higher education is not only about international students, it also includes mobility of academic staff members. Therefore, this chapter reflects on my ups and downs as well as many other opportunities that I gained in a privileged journey as an international early-career academic from Malaysia. The chapter starts with my personal experiences of how I identify myself as an international academic, the motivations to migrate, professional challenges that I face not only as an international academic but also as an early-career academic, the strategies that I adopted to overcome the challenges and how I self-created opportunities not only for myself but also for other colleagues – international academics and early-career academics. I will end the chapter with significant successes that came my way.

This research investigates the impact of nonlinear career trajectories on female staff in the academy. It argues that assessment of “achievement relative to opportunity” is essential to the equitable positioning of women in the academy.

This qualitative study is based on extended structured interviews with 43 staff.

Men and women can experience career interruptions, deviations, and hijacks, but, in general, women experience more interruption, and the cumulative effect on their careers is greater.

The authors point to ways in which the assessment of achievement relative to opportunity can be implemented in universities to improve retention and career outcomes for female academic and professional staff.

Embedding the principles of achievement relative to opportunity in evaluative decision making, supports people (particularly women) who have spent time away from the workforce in becoming more competitive in assessments of suitability for leadership and advancement. Changing traditional methods of evaluating merit has the potential to allow people from diverse backgrounds to be fairly evaluated, and shift the dominance of people who have experienced little or no career interruption.

The originality is the measurement of impact of nonlinear careers within the academy. The contribution is in the applicability of the findings and practical suggestions for implementation.

During the rapid transition online, university educators had to reconsider how they supported students with disabilities and neurological differences in accessing a high-quality remote learning experience. This chapter explores my personal experiences as an Early Career Academic (ECA) tasked with supporting our faculty during the transition to remote learning. By collating my personal experiences leading up to and throughout this period, I reflect on my own coping strategies required to fulfill this role. I also explore the forms of resilience that I utilised to support my colleagues who had a spectrum of perspectives and knowledge of inclusive digital pedagogies.

The increasing push towards centralisation and bureaucratisation in higher education, further exacerbated by the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, calls for a better understanding of the nature of collegiality in contemporary universities. We address this issue by looking into the necessary conditions and barriers to sustaining a collegiate environment. The empirical focus is on academics, academic leaders and professional support staff at Anonymous Business School (ABS), a department in a large civic UK university. We interviewed 32 participants across the school, ranging from early-career academics to experienced professors and members of department leadership teams. The findings suggest multiple emerging perspectives on collegiality, with features of horizontal collegiality perceived as key to successful academic responses to the crisis. The findings also indicate how sustaining a collegiate environment within the department requires both choice and effort from leadership and from staff, particularly when decision-making is primarily located at the centre of the university. The choice and effort made across different collegiate pockets contribute to the department becoming an ‘island of collegiality’ within the increasingly centralised and bureaucratised university hierarchy. In this sense, the actions of the department leadership to establish supporting mechanisms, and the actions of the staff to, in turn, embrace and build interpersonal relationships and professional identities, are key to sustaining a collegiate environment.

The ivory tower of academia is intriguing yet an interesting place to enter, survive and thrive. As an international academic who has worked in four different countries, I ground my reflections in three spheres, namely my positionality, my institutional culture and global academic culture. In this chapter, I describe how these three dimensions may sometimes collide to induce conflict yet converge at some point to create a thriving space for international academics. I share my stories and lived experiences to elaborate on my experiences of challenges and opportunities in academia and share insights for those who seek to be a part of academia.

Scholars have made important inroads to theorising and understanding working-class people's experiences of higher education (HE), as well as the broader complexities of navigating overlapping and sometimes competing middle- and working-class spaces.

In this chapter, we hope to add to this body of literature through examining the experiences and histories of two working-class women currently in the early stages of academic careers. Through the use of ‘experimental autoethnographies’ (Read & Bradley, 2018) and based on an assemblage of autoethnographic artefacts, we trace our journeys from undergraduate to post-PhD employment, picking up on key moments of pain, disconnect and isolation on the one hand, and celebration, support and pride on the other.

Through the tracing of these key moments in our recent academic trajectories, we make visible the difficulties of navigating elite spaces of academia as women with no family history of HE participation, exploring the ways in which we take on the role as ‘academic translator’ for those around us when discussing the labyrinthine meanings of academe. At the same time, and reflecting on these experiences from the perspective of navigating the margins of academia, we reject the pathologising narratives of working-class people and communities as uninterested in or hostile to HE through the unpacking of joyful moments shared with those around us related to our academic successes.

Finally, we point to ways in which we, as academics – however early career or precariously employed – are now in the position to support marginalised students or colleagues, ending our chapter with a series of practical suggestions for making academia ‘thinkable’ for future generations.

Short-term international mobility has become popular among academics who are seeking new scholarly experiences abroad for a limited period. Short-term international mobility refers to staying abroad for a few days, weeks or months for scholarly work, although there is no specific definition of ‘short’. In this chapter, I describe my experience of a five-month international stay on my first sabbatical. After positioning myself as a researcher on academic mobility and a mobile academic, I describe the international mobile experience from preparing to travel to returning home. Based on personal reflections, the chapter shares the challenges that early-career academics might confront and offers strategies to enjoy meaningful experiences in short-term mobility.