Through a phenomenological research design, this study explores experiences of precarity among early-career academics in the UK and the USA higher education sectors. These contexts, while similar, exhibit structural differences as pioneers of neoliberalization in the Global North. Conducting semi-structured interviews with 20 early-career…

According to the UK's Health and Safety Executive (HSE), there has been a 36.5% rise in reported cases of work-related stress between 2018/19 and 2019/20, to over 822,000 individual cases. Europe stress-related absence was second only to musculoskeletal disorders, with estimated work-related stress costing European companies 20 billion euros per…

This paper focuses on the working relationship between the director of an HE institute in the UK, and an artist-researcher navigating the higher education dance working environment and motherhood. The paper draws on personal experiences, sections labelled "vignettes" that highlight a tension faced by the individual and reflects on how…

Collegiality and the contribution to the sustenance of the academy through academic citizenship are central to commonly held conceptions of what it is to be a university. This study investigates the articulation and recognition of academic citizenship through institutional promotion criteria, including both traditional research and…

Inter-professional perspective-taking (the ability to take the perspective of colleagues with whom one is working, but who work in a different context or role type) is an aspect of empathy, with substantial benefits in the workplace, including environments where inter-professional collaboration is required, such as clinicians and administrators.…

This historical exploration of the development of the academic workforce in the UK and France was triggered by the observation of significant similarities in contemporary debates on casualisation, and segmentation despite their distinctive HE systems. We develop a quantitative history of academic staff to understand why the differences in the two…

This study considered how hybrid working impacts the management of menopause symptoms in HE Professional Services (PS) employees. The evidence suggested that work was affected by menopause symptoms and poor workplace control increased symptom severity. Participants adapted their working environment and employed compensatory actions to perform…

In this article the role of Human Resource Management (HRM) in the UK Higher Education (HE) sector is interrogated, with a focus on the Gig Academy. A literature review of the casualisation of academics in the sector is undertaken and critiqued through the consultative unitarist values and behaviours of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and…

When a pronounced taste for science leads researchers to self-select themselves in academia, higher education systems must be able to protect it. By relying on the economic theory of higher education, the international mobility and the sociology of science literature, we compare the working condition in the four major European higher education…

This study examines the psychosocial hazards experienced by academic staff working in UK institutions over time. A risk assessment framework developed by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) was used to measure seven key hazards: demands, control, support from managers and colleagues, relationships, role and change management. Data were obtained…

Calls to address concerning evidence surrounding mental health and wellbeing in doctoral researchers have grown internationally in recent years. Adopting an ecological systems approach, this article explores doctoral researchers' perspectives on what influences mental health and wellbeing in early-stage doctoral research. Forty-seven doctoral…

This writing is born out of our experiences of becoming older women, academy hags, facing the performative demands of the neoliberalizing patriarchal university. We are raging. With the figure of the Crone, and feminist-killjoy-croning as our creative and livid research method (Ahmed, S. 2023. "Feminist Killjoy." London: Penguin Random…

Academic culture now places high expectations on researchers to demonstrate research productivity alongside teaching, leadership and knowledge exchange. In two studies of researchers across career stages in UK higher education institutions (HEIs), we examined workplace climate within academic departments as (1) supportive of researchers' needs for…

Research into the impact of neoliberalism has shown that institutional and individual pressure on staff working in Higher Education (HE), has changed over the last 30 years. Our first research study showed that the changes resulted in mostly negative experiences for White staff. In a second study we have investigated the impact of neoliberalism on…

In this paper, we present results from an extensive survey of United Kingdom (UK) university academics investigating satisfaction with senior managers and university governance: the Senior Management Survey (SMS). In total, 5888 academic staff across the United Kingdom Higher Education (HE) sector completed the survey, and results were used to…