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The paper aims to shed light on how a group of feminist managers/leaders, in education and social studies departments, a notably under-explored and under-theorised group, “do power” in the increasingly corporatized education marketplace.

The research draws on the narratives of a small group of feminist women who hold authority positions at middle or senior levels. It draws on data from ethnographic interviews and participant observation carried out as part of an in-depth narrative inquiry (Andrews et al., 2008), carried out at three higher education institutions in the UK.

From a small sample such as this, any findings are necessarily tentative. Nonetheless, findings suggest that, whilst taking account of individual differences in styles, there has been a shift, over time, in the ways that the management role is approached by some feminist women. Analysis of the data also reveals that gendered expectations remain for those who carry the “feminist” label and asks whether these expectations are realistic.

The sample group is small which raises questions about what can and cannot be claimed. However, along with Maguire (2008), the author’s purpose is not with generalizability but seeks to explore issues and open up further areas of study.

This paper is an original empirical research which explores an under-researched group of women, namely, feminist managers and leaders who operate within the education marketplace. As they negotiate the challenges of working within the neoliberal academy, these women try, to varying degrees, to remain true to their feminist values and beliefs.

The study aims to analyse international studies on the impact that new forms of control and performativity in higher education have on academics’ identity. The aim was threefold, namely, to provide an overview of the main published findings; to establish biases and future lines of research and to offer a starting point to stimulate a debate on the future of universities.

The present study consists of a systematic review aimed at providing an overview of the main professional identities (PIs) described in the literature in the past 10 years. A bibliographic search was conducted on the Web of Science, SCOPUS and Education Resources Information Centre, which yielded a total of 26 articles that were subsequently subjected to thematic analysis.

The study provides an overview of the types of identities developed by academics as a result of the new forms of control. Among the main findings, this study reveals a clear predominance of PIs characterised by submission to the new neoliberal demands. The professional, social and health consequences associated with these identities are also highlighted. Finally, a proposal is made for future research to better understand how these new PIs are constructed and developed.

Because of the chosen filters or databases, the study could have omitted possible articles relevant to this review. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to replicate such a study by expanding, for example, the languages used.

This study helps us to obtain a detailed description of the different identities generated as a consequence of the new governance of higher education. Furthermore, possible implications for mitigating this situation are mentioned.

In this chapter, I will first conceptualize social movement theory before examining the importance of student movements and student activism. I then will link social movement theory to the university in Egypt. Next, I will contextualize university activism by describing the authoritarian structures of Egypt’s university system. Then, using secondary data sources, I will characterize university activism during the three transitional political periods (under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SACF), under President Morsi, and after the ousting of Morsi), and conclude with a discussion on the implications of student activism on future university reform.

This chapter discusses the challenges of safeguarding academic freedom during leadership transitions and organizational change in universities. Examples from a large public university illustrate current challenges and provide perspective for proactive measures to protect academic freedom. While the context and details are unique to the institution featured in the chapter, the lessons gleaned from each vignette offer valuable insight to faculty and university leaders who are motivated to better understand and uphold the principles of academic freedom and, more broadly, protected speech with higher education. To support academic leaders in achieving these goals, a conceptual framework for shared leadership through shared governance to support academic freedom is presented. The chapter concludes with recommendations for leveraging shared leadership to foster a university culture that supports of academic freedom.

This paper aims to explore the concept of sustainability imaginaries – unifying core assumptions on what sustainability entails held by stakeholders – set within a large suburban Canadian university. The study aims to expand the field of research into imaginaries by focusing on imaginaries within an institution as opposed to a societal or national level.

The paper is conceptual in nature and draws upon empirical tools, such as collaborative thematic coding of interviews of university community members, to illustrate emergent imaginaries around sustainability at the institution.

This paper identifies four core sustainability imaginaries in an analysis of the interview data: sustainability as performance, sustainability as governance, sustainability as techno-efficiency and sustainability as community organizing. The paper then uses these imaginaries to analyse two recent university-wide events: the establishment of a high-level sustainability council and an energy management program.

Because of the institutional focus of this study, the research may lack generalizability to other institutions. Thus, researchers are encouraged to explore what other imaginaries may exist at other institutions.

This paper includes implications for how universities can manage conflicting expectations and definitions in relation to new sustainability initiatives on campus.

This paper offers reflections on the concept of sustainability imaginaries and what they might offer the field of sustainability in higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a feminography, that is a “narration of a female self in a feminist age” (Abrams, 2017) by presenting a conceptual analysis, derived from experience, of email providing a form of discourse – that the author calls finger-speak – through which unexamined gender positioning caricatures a person’s identity. In so doing, the paper provides an illustrative case of a female manager being positioned through email to “know her place, perform it and feel it” (Hey, 2011).

An analysis of email foregrounds “finger-speak” as a form of digital conversation and through which people in universities may be positioned publicly but without their consent in relation to unexamined norms and assumptions. For women, it is argued, these norms are ageist and sexist. In this paper, fragments of finger-speak are collated to provide a reading of how mixing gendered norms with apparent differences of opinion constructs, via unexamined sexism, a public identity and then undermines it.

Through the case presented, the author argues that, because of a shared but unarticulated shadow over women as leaders, email lays the ground for subsequent scapegoating in such a manner that the woman takes responsibility for structural challenges that rightly belong to the organisation.

The contribution that email makes to constructing female identity in public is new, complementing other work that publicly characterises women leaders, through film (Ezzedeen, 2015), and through published writing such as autobiography (Kapasi et al., 2016). Emotional work undertaken by women in university leadership is so far under-represented in public, and email is a site through which this work becomes visible.

Couched within the author’s memories and correspondence with Kathy Charmaz, this chapter considers the philosophical nature of Constructivist, or Charmazian Grounded Theory, and contrasts it with the philosophical underpinnings of Critical Grounded Theory. Using an autopoietic framework, this chapter sees Charmazian and Critical Grounded Theory as interconnected, complementary, but distinct in the way they each approach research participants and interpret social processes. The chapter ends with reflections on Kathy Charmaz's contribution to critical grounded theory and where she had hoped the next generation of grounded theorists might expand the methodology.

This paper takes seriously the feminist adage that “the personal is political” by critically exploring my experiences as an early career scholar of gender and entrepreneurship studies to offer vital context for the contributions of my work and future research agenda, in light of the current historical moment of interconnected political, public health and environmental calamity.

The author presents reflections on her positionality, philosophical and political commitments, and theorises from her experiences of racist distraction and intersectional marginality in contemporary academia, considering their implications for incoming and aspiring gender and entrepreneurship scholars whose research agendas are still in development.

Racism functions as a persistent distraction from overall research agendas and activities, and delimits the lane of perceived contributions. However, collectively challenging it in work and study presents a vehicle by which intellectual and affective experiences of academic work may be enriched, and a spacious and expansive legacy of critical scholarship built that will be resonant for years to come.

The paper argues that although racism will doubtlessly continue to cause immense distraction, it presents an invitation to create positive social change, through collectivising with a community that aims to shape a liveable, equitable and imaginative academic future.