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

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.

Publisher

University of Wolverhampton

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/2436/624658

Type

Thesis or dissertation

Language

en

Description

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the Degree of Doctor of Education.

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

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Theses and Dissertations