The interweaving of diaries and lives : diary-keeping behaviour in a diary-interview study of international students’ employability management

This article explores ‘diary-keeping behaviour’, or the ways in which participants conduct the completion and submission of diaries in diary research. There is a paucity of methodologically oriented literature on diary method and as such this article makes a contribution to extending the existing knowledge of this method. The primary aim of this article is to set out in detail the key issues relating to diary-keeping behaviour, in order to provide a foundation for future critical explorations of this facet of diary research. The research that this paper is based on involved a 12-month diary-interview study. This project explored the employability management of Chinese international Master’s students in social sciences studying in the UK during one academic year. The article sets out key facets of diary-keeping behaviour and explores specific considerations for diary studies in higher education contexts, where diary research has been particularly neglected

Gender defender : response to Kelly Coate’s review of Gender Pedagogy (Palgrave)

Response to Kelly Coate’s review of Gender Pedagogy: Teaching, Learning and Tracing Gender in Higher Education, Emily F. Henderson, Palgrave, (Hdb) 978-1- 137-42848-6 Thank you, Kelly, for your review, and for the invitation in return to respond to your review. I am glad you found the discomfort of reading Gender Pedagogy ‘helpful’ – I in turn found the discomfort of reading your review helpful, in terms of understanding different possible receptions of the book, and in seeing how ‘I’ came across in that text

Academics in two places at once : (not) managing caring responsibilities at conferences

Conferences are important but neglected research sites. Yet conferences are sites where knowledge is constructed and shared, where careers are made and unmade, where important connections are formed, and they play a vital role in the development of research fields. There are many factors which determine who accesses which conferences where; this chapter focuses on the impact of caring responsibilities on academics’ access to and participation in conferences. Importantly, ‘access’ in this chapter is conceived of as both the ability to attend conferences, and the ability to participate in conferences once there. The chapter locates the specific discussion of conference attendance in the literature on academics and caring responsibilities. The chapter then considers the methodological and theoretical challenges involved in researching how caring responsibilities impact on academics’ experiences of being at conferences; this section addresses the design and implementation of a time-log research tool which was used in the research project ‘In Two Places at Once: The Impact of Caring Responsibilities on Academics’ Conference Attendance’. The third part of the chapter presents findings specifically from the time-log aspect of the research project, in which academics recorded the frequency, type and experience of contact with caring responsibilities during conferences.University of Warwick Research Development Fun

The (un)invited guest? Feminist pedagogy and guest lecturing

Teaching a one-off session on a colleague’s course is a commonplace occurrence in higher education teaching practice, but it is not an area that has received sufficient attention in pedagogical literature. This article focuses on the scenario where a feminist teacher is invited to give a guest lecture, but is not sure if working with feminist pedagogy will be welcome. Guest lecture pedagogy is outlined: (i) guest lectures are always and yet never a one-off, because they are always embedded in wider teaching practice (ii) guest lecture pedagogy is both a struggle between time and pedagogical principles and an opportunity to break with convention. The challenges and risks of implementing feminist pedagogy in a guest lecture are considered; ultimately the article argues that a feminist teacher cannot simply ‘lay aside’ feminist pedagogy for a guest lecture, but that some compromises will be necessary in adapting practice for this type of teaching

Queering "the idea of the university" : two queer conceptualizations of discursive deployment in higher education literature

‘The idea of the university’ is an expression which is frequently employed in discussions of what the university is, was, or could and should be. This article presents an exploration of the expression ‘the idea of the university’ reconceptualized as a queer signifier. Building on existing literature that works against the assumption that queer studies would always concentrate on people who identify as LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer), the article takes as its object of study the expression ‘the idea of the university’. Firstly, ‘the idea of the university’ is discussed in relation to the queering potential of figurative language, in particular metaphors. In the formulation ‘the idea of the university’, ‘university’ is placed in subjugation to ‘idea’, which opens up what could be termed queer slippage in the signification process. Secondly, the article uses the political resignification of ‘queer’ as a springboard to address the citation practices that lead to the resignification of the expression ‘the idea of the university’. Thus, the article presents these two interlinked queer theorizations of the discursive use of ‘the idea of the university’ in higher education literature

In two places at once : the impact of caring responsibilities on academic's conference participation : final project report

The study departs from the perspective that conferences are important but neglected research sites. Equality and diversity studies of the academic profession tend to focus on issues of care in relation to higher education institutions, rather than professional spaces that academics circulate in outside of their ‘home’ institution/s. Studies of care and the academic profession and/or mobility seldom focus on conferences. Therefore this study fills a gap in knowledge about academics, care and conferences. Conferences come to represent a particular type of challenge for care, because they are interruptions to the care routine. Challenges relating to care and conferences can involve the challenges of being accompanied to the conference and managing the dual role of care-giver and conference attendee, and/or ensuring that ongoing care support is provided at home during the conference

Sticky care and conference travel : unpacking care as an explanatory factor for gendered academic immobility

While there is increasing awareness of the contributing effect of the academic mobility imperative on gendered inequalities in the academic profession at large, there is a missing link in current research on this topic. Namely, while ‘care’ is often named as the explanatory factor for why women, and to an extent professionals of any gender at peak childrearing age, are less mobile, this article argues that care is insufficient as an explanatory factor for immobility. Care and other terms such as ‘family responsibilities’ and ‘domestic obligations’ come to serve as a shorthand or explanatory factor for gendered immobility, but these terms elide the complexity of the relationship between care and mobility. This article argues that, without a fuller understanding of how care and mobility intersect, inclusivity drives run the risk of misunderstanding or even reproducing the problem. The specific mobility addressed here is international conference travel as a form of short-term academic mobility which contributes to academic career success and the perpetuation of a mobile academic ideal. The article elaborates a novel conceptual construct, ‘sticky care’, which is applied to empirical data from a diary-interview study of the impact of caring responsibilities on academics’ conference participation. Two dominant mobility-related strategies are elaborated: ‘night/s away’ and ‘get back’. The overarching ambition of this article is at a conceptual level: to bring more complexity and nuance to the concept of care when it is mobilized as an explanatory factor for (gendered) immobility and indeed for inequalities in the academic profession at large

Gendered conditions of higher education access : advancing a gender prism analytic through the case of Haryana, India

This article argues that a holistic, nuanced analytical framework for analysing gender and access to higher education (HE) would be of great benefit to the field, especially in an era where many country contexts are declaring that gender inequalities in HE access are solved due to the use of the gender parity index (GPI) as a measure of success. As such, this article proposes a framework to analyse gendered conditions of access to HE, referring to the various ways in which young people of different genders arrive in HE but with different gendered backgrounds behind them and different gendered expectations of their futures ahead of them, even when they were born into the same families and communities. Drawing on feminist sociological and poststructuralist thinking, the proposed framework promotes a refractive perspective to unpack the varied gendered influences that shape young people’s educational trajectories. The article illustrates the framework with the case of the north-Indian state of Haryana, based on an in-depth mixed-methods empirical study of gendered HE access in government colleges. The analysis reveals enduring gendered disparities that are otherwise masked by the use of GPI, including gendered differences in the perceived purpose of HE for young people, which results in differentiated prioritisation of e.g. quality of institution or subject choice. The article aims to provide future studies in this area with a framework that can be applied in and beyond the Indian context

‘5 secrets they won’t tell you’ : The content and rhetoric of YouTube advice videos about searching for a doctoral supervisor

Much guidance on how to identify and contact a doctoral supervisor can be found on YouTube. There is a wealth of advice videos presented by ‘insiders’ including students, academics, consultants and institutional representatives. This article explores such ‘find a supervisor’ videos, characterising them as texts in the broader genre of doctoral writing advice. The article examines a sample of these videos thematically and then discursively, offering insight into the advice they give, as well as their positionality and rhetorical constructions of authority. Although potentially helpful to applicants, particularly those without strong networks, these videos nonetheless contribute to a complex advice market which requires critical scrutiny in terms of motivation and message. The article argues that, although supervisor advice videos may provide accessible support, they also capitalise on doctoral anxiety and perpetuate a culture of compliance with higher education norms, rather than encourage institutional and cultural transformation towards inclusivity