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The university sector at the beginning of the 21st Century is shifting in response to national and global changes in the role and purpose of Higher Education. Some universities, including the University of Hertfordshire, have chosen to focus attention on engagement with business and commerce. This practice based research examines the experience of academics in relation to the new challenges posed by this strategic development. There are three threads of investigation; interviews, examination of key concepts and the practitioner dimension. Drawing on a qualitative and constructivist approach, individual interviews with a range of business facing academics explore their experience of engaging with new activities. My perspective, as a manager of business facing academics, provides an important thread and situates the work firmly in the practice context. The implicit expectations arising from strategic positioning as a business facing university are examined. A conceptual framework is established with a focus on the nature of business facing activity, including its relationship with traditional forms of teaching and research, learning through work in the Higher Education setting and the idea of an enabling local context. The research found that amongst those undertaking business facing activity, academic identity is a fluid and multi-faceted construct reconfigured through experience and learning in the workplace; by its nature not easily defined, labelled or bounded. The challenge for universities is to nurture and sustain individuals in the creation and use of academic identities, in order to meet the undoubted challenges to come. This requires a forward looking, inclusive and innovative stance, resisting the temptation to judge current academic identities by the established notions of the past. Management of academics involved in business facing activity requires a more flexible, trusting and individual approach than is traditionally seen in universities.

Magister Educationis - MEd / This study investigates the factors that conditioned the establishment of, and responses to, a centrally coordinated, institution wide change initiative aimed at promoting equity in the academic workplace in an historically white South African university. It is examined by presenting two kinds of analyses, firstly, an institutional analysis that explores the environmental and managerial conditionalities that influenced the reception, interpretation and responses to the national policy framework. Secondly, a bottom-up analysis that explores the distinctive disciplinary contexts that conditioned the responses of the participants. The study reveals that top-down approaches to managing change have limited capacity to influence the nature and pace of change on the ground, despite the best intentions of institutional managers. The study illustrates that the distinctive disciplinary context conditioned the responses to, and outcomes of the change initiative. In this study, the authority of the academic project powerfully trumps the legitimacy and credibility of the institutional transformation initiative.

Magister Educationis - MEd / This study investigates the factors that conditioned the establishment of, and responses to, a centrally coordinated, institution wide change initiative aimed at promoting equity in the academic workplace in an historically white South African university. It is examined by presenting two kinds of analyses, firstly, an institutional analysis that explores the environmental and managerial conditionalities that influenced the reception, interpretation and responses to the national policy framework. Secondly, a bottom-up analysis that explores the distinctive disciplinary contexts that conditioned the responses of the participants. The study reveals that top-down approaches to managing change have limited capacity to influence the nature and pace of change on the ground, despite the best intentions of institutional managers. The study illustrates that the distinctive disciplinary context conditioned the responses to, and outcomes of the change initiative. In this study, the authority of the academic project powerfully trumps the legitimacy and credibility of the institutional transformation initiative.

Following the postmodern discourses of spatial conceptualisation, this study examined the manner in which space in an Open Distance Learning (ODL) University enables or constrains academics’ work as they go about the process of constructing their academic identities. Focusing on academics’ engagement in one college of the University, the study was premised on the assumption that, in the current higher education (HE) dispensation, academic identity construction presumes and demands the existence of supportive space for academics to effect the academic practices. Lefebvre’s (1991) social production of space and Soja’s (1996) Thirdspace were used as lenses to examine the multiple dimensions of space in relation to spatial practices in the College, the spatial policies and the experiences of academics as the users of the Institutional space. Qualitative ethnographic research methods that were used to collect data included a review of the Institutional policies, intranet posts and emails; the observation and photographing of academics’ offices and administrative office space; observation of departmental meeting proceedings and the conducting of semi-structured interviews with academics of different academic ranks. Findings suggested that although some forms of space are supportive of spatial practices that contribute to academic identity construction, the imagined space of the ODL Institution can be unfairly inclusive and inconsiderate of academics’ unique spatial needs. Such inclusivity of space seemed to be inconsistent with the appropriate ODL space as imagined by some participants where academics may work comfortably and with limited restrictions. The study concluded by making recommendations on how the Institution and the academics may manage space for optimal academic identity construction in the College. / Educational Foundations / D. Ed. (Philosophy of Education)

An expanding field of historical study is interested in examining the connection between gendered spaces in academia and the dynamic identities available within them, inspired by the theoretical framework of the “scientific persona”. By drawing on this discussion, the thesis aims to showcase the institutional and social circumstances through which early female university students came to produce and reshape academic identities in Sweden in the 1890s. It focuses on the establishment of “Uppsala kvinnliga studentförening” (UKSF), the first local university association for women students in Sweden, thus locating the process that produces academic identities at the crossroad of individual and collective strategies and forums. To this end, the thesis analyzes UKSF’s protocols in addition to autobiographical documents by two early members, Lydia Wahlström and Gulli Petrini. The study shows that by providing a collective forum, UKSF managed to enable a wholly new way of being a female student. This process, which shaped both collective and individual identities, was linked to socialization and assimilation. A complete assimilation through the embodiment of an available male academic persona was, however, not possible. Rather, the female students merged identities based on several repertoires. For instance, Lydia Wahlström crystallized a persona drawing on the position as president of UKSF. At times, however, she seems to have embodied male academic personae in male dominated academic spheres. The essay additionally offers approaches to analyzing the long-lasting challenge for female students to aspire an academic career.

Extant literature on academic identities claims that academic identities not only represent academics’ subjectively construed understandings of who they are but they also derive from roles, statuses, membership in disciplinary communities and characteristics that make academics unique individuals. Even so, research focusing exclusively on academic identities is unprecedented in the Lesotho higher education (HE) sector; therefore, this study describes how narratives of experiences and meanings attached to being an academic relate to the construction of academic identities at the National University of Lesotho (NUL). How do reflexive interpretations of cultural expectations tied to membership in disciplinary communities influence the negotiation of academic identities and work behaviour of academic staff? How do descriptions of the (mis)alignment between job facets, individual values and expectations influence the meaningfulness and fulfilment for academics’ professional self-concepts? How do stories of internalised meanings of involvement and symbolic identification with NUL influence academic identity trajectories? Being interpretive in nature, this study used narrative interviews to collect data from a sample of thirty-one academics from NUL. The findings revealed that ‘who’ an academic is derives from meanings of ‘lived experiences’ of work enjoyment, applicability, exploitation, facilitation, multitasking, prestige and burnout. The findings also showed that academic identities were negotiated by reflexively interpreting the cultural expectation of ‘finishing work on time’ through work behaviours such as managing time, working overtime, self-motivation, underperforming, balancing roles and seeking work assistance. The participants’ narratives also revealed that the fulfilment for academics’ professional self-concepts derived from autonomy, accomplishments, learning, interdependencies, work environment, students’ attitudes and recognition. Lastly, the study showed that participants’ academic identity trajectories were influenced by altruism, passion, options, disillusions and relations. Overall, the ‘narratives of experience’ reiterated that academic identities at NUL were contextualised constructs of ‘work experiences’, ‘membership in communities’, ‘job attitudes’ and ‘self -discovery,’ based on the self as a unique individual, a group member and a role holder. Consistent with the interactionist perspective, academic identities at NUL represent structurally, culturally and institutionally located stories of experiences and meanings derived from the work situation, the setting and social relationships that academics participate in daily at NUL. / Sociology / D. Phil. (Sociology)