Academic Fluidity? An Unconventional Route to the Professoriate

Abstract

This chapter charts a route into the professoriate involving moves from one discipline to another and undertaking job roles and work categorised as non-academic activities by the academy. The case study uses story-telling and reflection to present three ‘moments’ of personal, professional change arising from heightened, intentional agency when making career-changing decisions. A common theme arising at each moment is the shift in my identity, as I viewed myself and as others viewed me. I use theories and models associated with becoming an academic or blended professional to interrogate my experiences. This retrospective review of key decisions in a patchwork career illuminates some patterns and common threads, including my need to undertake challenging work that has a positive impact on student and staff experiences in universities, my strong, undeniable personal ambition and the value, across a career, of reimagining, remaking and reinvesting in one’s fundamental goals and aspirations. The chapter introduces the notion of academic fluidity, a new concept of identity formation at the boundaries of academic work and intends to inspire readers to be part of the change to the academy as it embraces an increasingly diverse range of ways of achieving and enacting the role of professor.