Reconstructing Academic Identities at Risk: Conceptualising Wellbeing and Re-imaging Identities

Abstract

This chapter presents a conceptual model for the exploration of academic identity, which is in a multifaceted relationship with academics’ experiences of precarious working conditions. The chapter adopts Archer’s (Being human: The problem of agency, Cambridge University Press, 2000, Structure, agency and the internal conversation, Cambridge University Press, 2003) work on reflexivity, and posits it as a means to examine the identity of academics at risk, and how they re-image themselves through ‘inner conversations’ in response to neoliberal influences. This work contributes to the literature about the varying sense of academic wellbeing, and it helps to elucidate proactive strategies that academics develop in order to sustain their wellbeing and to ameliorate an expressed sense of reduced agency.