ABSTRACT

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

chapter 2|10 pages

Mothers, scholars and feminists

Inside and outside the Australian academic system

chapter 3|9 pages

The lecturer’s new clothes

An academic life, in textiles

chapter 4|13 pages

You’re doctor what?

Challenges for creative arts research in a culture of binaries

chapter 5|10 pages

“Going to see”

An academic woman researching her own kind

chapter 6|10 pages

‘If these walls could talk’

Looking in, walking out, and reimagining a broken system

chapter 7|11 pages

Motherhood and academia

A story of bodily fluids and going with the flow

chapter 8|11 pages

Taking a trip through and with the sisterhood of the Global South

Storying our experiences as female academics in Indonesia and Australia

chapter 9|11 pages

In the spirit of shared solidarity

Women in academia and transformation

chapter 11|10 pages

An academic career

Looking back and looking forward

chapter 12|11 pages

Identity and inclusion in academia

Voices of migrant women

chapter 13|10 pages

Trauma in the academy

chapter 15|9 pages

Not a matter of will

A narrative and cross-cultural exploration of maternal ambivalence

chapter 16|10 pages

Being a mother, becoming a university teacher

Traversing the terrain to knowing oneself

chapter 17|10 pages

Metaphors for women’s experiences of early career academia

Buffy, Alice, and Frankenstein’s creature