Sessional academic staff form most of the teaching staff cohort in Australian universities. The available literature supports that this important staff cohort often experience precarious and insecure work, restricted access to training, support and development, and limited opportunities for career progression (compared to their colleagues in…

The psychological contract shapes people's perceptions and behaviours in the workplace through how people perceive and react to feedback from their environment. Little research has been carried out on the psychological contracts of university professional staff and this oversight is particularly problematic due to the impact that the psychological…

This study examines the extent to which career competencies (knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to manage one's own work and learning experiences to achieve the desired career progression) are prevalent amongst early career researchers (ECRs). We adapted the Career Competencies Questionnaire [Akkermans, J., Brenninkmeijer, V., Huibers, H.,…

Despite the diversity of entry points into academia, little research exists examining the experiences and impact of precarious employment at different life stages. Drawing on interviews with 19 academics employed casually or on fixed-term contracts in Australian universities, this paper illustrates how precarious employment is experienced at…

The attacks on university staff and students engaged in teaching, researching and speaking out against the state, military and religious powers, and for fairness, democracy, and equality, are increasing. As has been noted by many academics and commentators, liberal democratic principles of free speech and movement, alongside academic freedom, are…

Research consistently shows that higher-education participation has positive impacts on individual outcomes. However, few studies explicitly consider differences in these impacts by socio-economic background (SEB), and those which do fail to examine graduate trajectories over the long run, non-labor outcomes and relative returns. We address these…

In 2020, COVID-19 triggered rapid growth in the use of flexible work arrangements (FWA) in universities. While the impacts of this shift are still emerging, this article contributes analysis of the ways university staff experienced FWAs prior to the pandemic. In-depth discussions with sixty staff across eight focus groups highlighted substantial…

The purpose of this research is to describe the characteristics of the re-entry experiences of Saudis returning to Saudi Arabia after studying abroad. The total number of participants in the study was 21, consisting of 13 male and 8 female participants returning from studying in the U.S., U.K., and Australia. By conducting semi-structured…

Despite the challenges associated with the pursuit of a career as an artist, such as job insecurity and an oversupply of labour, many individuals continue to seek a career in this field. Australian artists also face additional challenges, such as geographic isolation from the major art centres of the world, resulting in perceptions of the need to…

This article supports Bérubé's conclusion regarding the intellectual health of humanities scholarship. However, it argues that the case of "contingent faculty"--or academics with short-term or casual contracts--is in many respects different in Australia to the situation he outlines for the US. Whilst a variety of funding pressures have…

This article discusses how a performed drama based on a narrative inquiry into the lived experience of women casual academics in Australian universities is understood by an audience. The audience, principally comprised of casual and ongoing academics, described the drama as authentic and personally recognised many of the main scenarios and…

It is the norm for the casual teaching precariat to experience insecure labour conditions requiring an additional skill set to teachers with stable employment. As more beginning teachers than ever before commence work in casual employment--often a tenuous and unsupported transition into the profession--it is beholden on teacher educators to…

Whether or not disadvantaged students are realising the same benefits from higher education as their peers is of fundamental importance to equity practitioners and policymakers. Despite this, equity policy has focused on access to higher education and little attention has been paid to graduate outcomes. The Australian study reported here used…

This article confirms the reliability of a protean and boundaryless career attitudes scale, tested in a pilot study. Additionally, it summarises the results of this study into the career attitudes of professional staff in Australian and UK universities. A mixed methods approach was taken using a survey consisting of both closed questions on a…

This article documents the experiences of three early career academics trying to establish a network of early career academics (ECAs) in a middle-ranked university in Australia. The changing context of academia means that ECAs face considerable challenges in understanding and negotiating effective career paths. Some of the issues encountered…