Isolation in Globalizing Academic Fields: A Collaborative Autoethnography of Early Career Researchers

This study examines academic isolation – an involuntary perceived separation from the academic field to which one aspires to belong, associated with a perceived lack of agency in terms of one’s engagement with the field – as a key challenge for researchers in increasingly globalized academic careers. While prior research describes early career researchers’ isolation in their institutions, we theorize early career researchers’ isolation in their academic fields and reveal how they attempt to mitigate isolation to improve their career prospects. Using a collaborative autoethnographic approach, we generate and analyze a dataset focused on the experiences of ten early career researchers in a globalizing business academic field known as Consumer Culture Theory. We identify bricolage practices, polycentric governance practices, and integration mechanisms that work to enhance early career researchers’ perceptions of agency and consequently mitigate their academic isolation. Our findings extend discussions on isolation and its role in new academic careers. Early career researchers, in particular, can benefit from a deeper understanding of practices that can enable them to mitigate isolation and reclaim agency as they engage with global academic fields

Petrographic Characterization of Raw Material Sources at Oldupai Gorge, Tanzania

Oldupai Gorge is located within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northern Tanzania along the western margin of the East African Rift System. Oldupai’s sedimentary record exhibits a complex sequence of inter-stratified lithic assemblages associated with the Early, Middle, and Later Stone Age. While diachronic technological change is perceptible, the totality of locally available rocks remained largely unchanged through time. Here, thin section petrography, Scanning Electron Microscopy-Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy, and Electron Probe Micro Analysis were employed to characterize source lithologies in the Oldupai region. One of our goals was to determine if outcrops have rock types with unique mineral compositions amenable for sourcing lithic artifacts. Geological samples were collected in primary and secondary positions, from which sixty-two samples were selected for analysis. Comparative analyses show that five outcrops have quartzites with unique mineral compositions, seven meta-granite varieties are unique to five individual outcrops, Engelosin phonolite samples are texturally and mineralogically unique, and magmatic samples recovered in secondary position may be sourced to their volcanic center. Our results demonstrate it is feasible to differentiate between source materials using optical mineralogy which implies that sourcing lithic artifacts based on mineral compositions is possible. This is further substantiated by assigning the source/s for previously described fuchsitic quartzite artifacts from three archaeological sites at Oldupai as this raw material type uniquely occurs at two nearby outcrops. Systematic archaeological testing will allow future researchers to glean new understandings of hominin behavior and resource procurement within the Oldupai paleobasin