Lived Experiences of Women in Academia Metaphors, Manifestos and Memoir

Lived Experiences of Women in Academia shares meaningful stories of women working in the academy, from numerous disciplines, backgrounds and countries, to unveil the complex and distinct dimensionalities they experience in their life and work. Chapters are written using a range of responsive, personal and aesthetic techniques, including metaphor, manifesto and memoir, with reflections inspired by textiles, online blogs and forums, theatre, creative writing, fiction and popular culture. They engage with themes and ideas including gender roles, family-making, work-life balance, motherhood, institutional violence and harassment and the self and identity, revealing how these uniquely manifest for women in academia. This collection takes account of the experiences of female academics from previous decades and the experiences of those to come, as well as those outside the academic system entirely. Lived Experiences of Women in Academia aims to liberate thinking around the life of a female academic through collaborative storytelling and discussion, to encourage new conversations and connections between women in academia across the globe

List of figures; List of contributors; Preface; Chapter 1 Uncreatively writing women’s lives in academia; Chapter 2 Mothers, scholars and feminists: inside and outside the Australian academic system; Chapter 3 The lecturer’s new clothes: an academic life, in textiles; Chapter 4 You’re doctor what? Challenges for creative arts research in a culture of binaries; Chapter 5 "Going to see": an academic woman researching her own kind; Chapter 6 ‘If these walls could talk’: looking in, walking out, and reimagining a broken system; Chapter 7 Motherhood and academia: a story of bodily fluids and going with the flow; Chapter 8 Taking a trip through and with the sisterhood of the Global South: storying our experiences as female academics in Indonesia and Australia; Chapter 9 In the spirit of shared solidarity: women in academia and transformation; Chapter 10 Playing in the corridors of academia; Chapter 11 An academic career: looking back and looking forward; Chapter 12 Identity and inclusion in academia: voices of migrant women; Chapter 13 Trauma in the academy; Chapter 14 A woman in academia: . . . and what about the children?; Chapter 15 Not a matter of will: a narrative and cross-cultural exploration of maternal ambivalence; Chapter 16 Being a mother, becoming a university teacher: traversing the terrain to knowing oneself; Chapter 17 Metaphors for women’s experiences of early career academia: Buffy, Alice, and Frankenstein’s creature; Chapter 18 The double life of a casual academic; Afterword; Index

Alison L. Black is a narrative researcher and early childhood educator. Her arts-based research and scholarly work seeks to foster connectedness, community, wellbeing and meaning-making through the building of reflective and creative lives and identities. Ali is interested in storied and visual approaches for dismantling personal/professional binaries and representing lives. Her research and writing is concerned with the power and impact of collaborative and relational knowledge construction. Susanne Garvis is Professor of Child and Youth Studies in the Department of Education, Communication and Learning, University of Gothenburg. Her focus is the field of early childhood education. Susanne has been involved in Australian, European and international research projects and is the current organizer of the Nordic Early Childhood Systems Approach Research Group.