In her recent talk as part of our seminar series, Daphne Loads from the Institute of Academic Development reflected on how different understandings of emotion ripple through a newly published collection of writings on academic identities.
Research on academic identities is a growing area of scholarly enquiry. While critics may dismiss this as a navel-gazing activity (a critique that Daphne acknowledged and addressed in her presentation), questions about the perception of roles and values of academics are fundamental to understanding the changing landscape of global university developments – shaped, for example, by increasingly powerful frameworks of performativity, accountability, and neoliberal political approaches to higher education.
How does this affect the emotional experiences of academics in their day-to-day lives? And how do emotions contribute to the very shaping of these academic identities, and to academic relationships? These were questions that Daphne raised, framed by a feeling of ‘unease’ – about criticising a system from a relatively comfortable position within it.
Questions asked by participants included:
- How can we create spaces to talk about emotions, without those spaces being reappropriated by the neoliberal university? Or, do we need to integrate talking about emotions into the latter in order to justify this?
- How can we keep room for surprise and curiosity in everyday academic lives?
- How are emotions in academia gendered?
- Which emotions are connotated positively, which emotions are stigmatised, and which emotions make us vulnerable?
- What role do emotions play in academic hierarchies and power dynamics?
- What is the range and flux of emotions of working in a university?
- Which are the emotions we do not talk about easily – e.g. jealousy, shame, or anxiety?
Watch Daphne’s video to find out more about her ideas – videos.