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Academic Identities in Crisis? September 4th - 6th September 2008
Fictional texts like Possession and the saga of the University of Poppleton provide us with
fascinating accounts of academic identity - and simply surviving inside and outside universities.
At this conference we aim to explore the production and consumption of your academic identities. This conference will be of interest to anyone who wishes to reflect upon and interrogate their academic identity, in any subject area and from a variety of backgrounds, both inside and outside HE institutions.
Questions to consider include:
• How is your research and/or teaching identity structured? Is it literal or symbolic? What metaphors do you use to explain and analyse your practice?
• What is the relationship between you and your research topic/teaching area? What models do you use for understanding your academic work?
• How do you negotiate the interface between the ivory tower and the marketplace? How do you get your research ‘out there’? How do you construct and negotiate a ‘public’ identity?
• How do the texts, objects, people and places you research reflect and/or shape your identity?
• Can you map changes in your identity through transformations in your teaching/research, especially from postgraduate to lecturer/researcher or from lecturer/research to professor? What about mapping changes in your identity if you have moved from one discipline to another or one role to another? How can interdisciplinarity be managed? How/Have you managed to transfer your identity into the public arena?
• How do you manage the academic identities of others, either through line management or staff
development roles?
• Have changes in your life prompted transformations in your research/teaching? How can we or how do we ‘enjoy’ these identities?
• Is there a conflict between your teaching and research identity? Do you have more than one identity for different contexts and occasions and does this cause you any physical and/or emotional and/or professional difficulties? Do you have an ‘ideal’ identity you are trying to attain and, if so, where does this come from (books, films, mentors etc.)? What choices are we presented with?
• How do you think others conceive of your research, teaching or public identities? What do external evaluators say/write about your research (peer review, book reviews, in the news, at conferences) or your teaching (students, peer observation etc.)? How do you feel about this?
• How do you negotiate external challenges to your research or teaching identity such as the RAE, employability agenda, corporate strategies, widening participation, QA, and internationalism etc.?
Your Methodologies and Approaches
We encourage a variety of methodologies, from qualitative educational/sociological research to textual or visual approaches. Presentations can include texts, objects, interview material, posters, photos, podcasts, blogs, performance or films to represent and explain your identities. We welcome both traditional and more creative approaches.
Deadline for Abstracts
Please send 300 word abstracts to Helen Day (HFDay@uclan.ac.uk) or Annemarie Mcallister (AMcallister1@uclan.ac.uk) by 10th March 2007. Abstracts can be for papers, posters, exhibitions or objects, podcasts, blogs, performances and films. We are also interested in abstracts for panel sessions or 2 - 4 members. The first afternoon of the conference will be on tools for researching academic identity, including a workshop by Lin Norton on 'Negotiating the researcher-teacher divide through pedagogical action research'. If you are interested in running a session please send an abstract or contact the organisers.
Why you would be interested in this conference
This conference will be of interest to anyone who wishes to reflect upon and interrogate their academic identity, in any subject area and from a variety of backgrounds.
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