This doctoral study explores how early career academics experience their sense of belonging to the academic profession and how they experience the teaching research nexus during the transition of their institution from a teaching- to a research-led environment with an ethnography-informed phenomenology approach. Moreover, it examines the complexity of the transition and the role that ECAs play in the university repositioning. This study seeks to place the investigation in a broader frame of social and cultural analysis to go deep into the everyday experiences of the ECAs around issues of their sense of identity, as well as their ways of connecting and bringing about changes in their work communities during a changing environment. It will shed light on scholarly debates on the growth of academic identity in the early career stage and faculty development in China. [Note: The publication year (2022) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct publication year for this article is 2021.]