Living the dream … but for how long? Being an early-career academic in the context of ‘excellence’

Abstract

This chapter defines early-career academics (ECAs) as those who have completed their PhD within the last five years (Laudel and Gläser, 2008); yet as explained in other chapters of this book, this definition has been strained due to the diversifying of pathways into academia. Whilst the PhD provides grounding in research, it does not seem to prepare ECAs to design and deliver high quality teaching, design curricula, use educational technologies, and engage with the broader community or develop leadership capacity. Higher education (HE) research demonstrated that ECAs feel insufficiently prepared for these extra responsibilities in the modern turbulent context (Matthews et al., 2014). For ECAs who pursue academic careers in the first five years following PhD completion, becoming a part of the academic culture involves a process of transition and adjustment (Bosanquet et al., 2016; Price et al., 2015). However, the transitory periods of entering the academic profession may appear similar to those of relocating to a new country’s university, which demonstrates, more broadly, the intensity and complexity of human experience as people cross multiple borders. For example, based on an ethnographic study, Barkhuizen (2002) characterised the transition of a British academic, who accepted his first academic position in a South African university as an iterative process of overlapping phases: conforming, coping, generating, opposing, and resisting (by actively participating in attempts to change the system). However, one of the study’s limitations was that these categories might resonate more with young, early-career academics who are also migrant academics, highlighting the similarities that these two groups may have.