Shifting academic identities in a post 1992 university. What are the implications for gender?

Abstract

Under the weight of the neoliberal agenda, higher education lecturers in the United Kingdom (UK) struggle to maintain their professional identity, destabilised by the pressures of marketisation and accountability. The questions explored within this thesis are based around a research project that aimed to examine the shifting academic identities of lecturers in a post-1992 university. The research adopted a qualitative methodology, informed by a post-structuralist perspective and a Foucauldian theoretical framework. Neoliberalism, marketisation of higher education and new managerialism have disrupted academic identities and altered the very nature of academic work (Fumasoli et al., 2015). Academics are required to meet students’ raised expectations in a business-based environment and are obliged to participate in the new culture of audit and increased accountability This thesis argues that academics’ identities have shifted to include three new identities: customer service-provider, carer and for some, researcher. Analysis of the data suggests that there are clearly gendered patterns of work at the university and highlights how the Research Excellence Framework (REF), also has gendered implications (Yarrow and Davies 2018). This thesis presents the concept of academic identity in a post-1992 UK university as a fluid and multifaceted entity. This is shaped by the broad relationship between the universities’ adoption of neoliberal agendas and the impact of this commitment on the life of academics, resulting in the appearance of a new identity of a ‘multifarious’ academic.