This paper contributes a discursive perspective on how academics employ self-deprecating humour and laughter to talk about and construct the struggles they faced in academia. Underpinned by ethnomethodological approaches to studying spoken interactions, the paper argues that just as utterances accomplish social actions, academic struggles are discursively constructed. The data came from 30 qualitative interviews with academics working in applied linguistics and related fields in the UK. They ranged from early career researchers to professor emeritus. Drawing insights from higher education studies, pragmatics and interactional linguistics, the paper examines how speakers employed self-deprecating humour and laughter as interactional resources and pragmatic strategies to co-construct understanding, negotiate positioning and enact certain identities in an interview. It also adds a new dimension to higher education studies; in particular, how academics construct their identities through the ways they talked about academic work-related struggles.