Experiencing higher education as an academic practitioner: negotiating academic identity

A study of academic identity carried out in Australia and England is illuminating how academics in different university contexts and with different career orientations position themselves and interpret what is possible as they mediate the influences of structure and agency. The paper presents one element of this mixed methods study: the early findings from in-depth interviews with mid-career academics in English and Australian universities. This work has enabled an exploration of key issues in academic formation such as how experiences are changing globally; academics’ experiences of negotiating a complex and perplexing set of institutional and national constraints; and what enables academics to construct a productive career in higher education. The research draws upon the theoretical resources of Margaret Archer to gather and analyse evidence on how academics interpret their situations as constraining or enabling, and to understand the modes of reflexivity they employ in doing this.