Abstract
The ageing and impending retirement of much of the academic workforce, as well as the growing casualization of university staff, are two major issues impacting Australian universities today. These issues are particularly pertinent for recent PhD graduates who aspire to academic careers. While research has been carried out on this group in Australia, virtually all studies have been quantitative, or have focused solely on the casual academic. Such research has revealed a sharp increase in the proportion of casual academic positions over the past two decades (May, Peetz, & Strachan 2013). These casual employees are disproportionately female, and, indeed, women continue to be underrepresented in permanent academic positions across Australia (May 2011). In this paper, I offer qualitative insights into the experiences and practices of aspiring academics, who may or may not be employed as casuals. I draw on 17 semi-structured interviews conducted with both female and male early career academics in the arts, humanities, or social science.
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My heartfelt thanks go to all the people who participated in this research. I found it both profoundly comforting and deeply disturbing that your experiences so closely mirrored my own. Thanks also to those who read and provided feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript, especially the editors of this volume. This research is unfunded, and was not conducted as part of my paid (part-time, fixed-term) academic work.
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McKenzie, L. (2017). A Precarious Passion: Gendered and Age-Based Insecurity Among Aspiring Academics in Australia. In: Thwaites, R., Pressland, A. (eds) Being an Early Career Feminist Academic. Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54325-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54325-7_2
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