Research is at the core of universities' raison d'être and is an integral aspect of academic work, yet the ever-changing parameters around research are problematic. While studies have examined changes brought about through research assessment exercises and issues of academic identity in the twenty-first century, fewer studies have used arts-related research methods to engage with academics' experiences of these changes. This article draws upon visual and textual material generated by academics at an Australian university to investigate how academic researchers engage with research in the current milieu. This research offers an aesthetic mode of interruption and resistance to consider the emotional labour, work and energy involved in doing research that cannot be captured through neoliberal research measurement discourses. It deploys a post-Foucauldian governmentality theoretical framework to illustrate the ways in which academics [re]position multiple selves constantly to build more robust and critical responses to higher education reform.