Yes / This paper offers a critical reflection on the experience of two former Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) - the authors - who were tasked with creating a digital learning program during the first UK national lockdown in 2020. The program drew from an emerging body of literature that seeks to employ Freirian pedagogies in the digital classroom and was designed to equip both new and established members of faculty with the skills needed for online teaching. While taking on this challenge, however, the experienced GTAs found that their pedagogical instincts and practices were challenged by their positionalities as young Early Career Researchers (ECRs) from underrepresented groups in British Academia. The aim of this paper is thus to scrutinise the potential for online learning to democratise and shift perceived hierarchies within academia, not only for students, but for ECRs navigating the structures of university teaching in the current employment climate.

The thesis follows the research stream focused on changes to the academic environment in the recent decades and their impact on academic professional paths and identities. Specifically, it is concerned with the phenomenon of attrition from academic profession which is pursued through a perspective of professional identity. We understand academic identities as an integral part of current changes to the academic environment and their study thus may help us better understand the changes as well as their influence on the development of academic ambitions. The aim of the thesis is to ascertain what kind of people and with what kind of professional identities enter and leave academia and for what reasons, and on this basis to identify barriers to the development of academic identities and paths. Special attention is paid to research field and gender aspects of the development of professional identities in order to explore the possible influence of specific structural factors (mainly field specific organization of academic production and gender specific biographies) and gain information needed for appropriate policy measures aimed at supporting professional development of early-career researchers. The analysis is based on narrative interviews with people who left academic professional path. The outcome of...