INSECURE WORK ◆ Image: Marten Bjork/Unsplash
Leaving academia
The harm & heartbreak of precarity The call came a few days before Christmas. It was my Head of School. ‘This is going to be a difficult conversation’, she said. And then my world caved in. The permanent senior lecturer position that the University had created around my teaching and research, the job that would have given me and my family security at the end of my 5 year contract, had gone to someone else. As of 31 January I would be unemployed. Anyone who knows the job market in Australian academia, especially in the Humanities, knows that there are no other jobs, and that therefore my academic career had effectively ended. The fear that every precarious worker knows only too well had materialised for me in spectacular fashion.
You might have read this and thought, ‘Well, perhaps she wasn’t a stellar enough candidate and the better person got the job. Perhaps she hadn’t published enough, or in journals that weren’t prestigious enough. Perhaps she wasn’t perceived as internationally accomplished, of high enough calibre for a world-class university.’ Such assumptions would be understandable, but they would be wrong. You might also think, ‘Well, these days one needs to understand the global nature of the academic job market. Why doesn’t she just seek for employment abroad?’ To continued overpage...
Dr Una McIlvenna, ANU
ADVOCATE VOL. 29 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2022
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