Rachel Thwaites is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Lincoln, UK. She has interests in gender, identities, higher education, health and illness, emotion work, naming, and qualitative methods.  She has published on British women's naming decisions on marriage and sense of identity, choice feminism, and older people's experiences of emergency admission to hospital.
Amy Pressland is International HR Projects Manager for DB Cargo UK working on an international research project called Women in Management. Previously she was Lecturer in Education at the University of East Anglia, UK and has published articles and book chapters on mixed-sex sport in HE, European media representations of gender at major sporting events, the surveillance of sportswomen's bodies in British newspapers, and the media coverage of women's boxing..

      

Introduction: Being an Early Career Feminist Academic in a Changing Academy; Rachel Thwaites and Amy Pressland.- PART I: INTRODUCING THE EARLY CAREER EXPERIENCE.- Chapter 1. A Precarious Passion: Gendered and Age-Based Insecurity among Aspiring Academics in Australia; Lara McKenzie.- Chapter 2. Navigating Gendered Expectations at the Margins of Feminism and Criminology; Olga Marques.- PART II: AFFECT AND IDENTITIES: NEGOTIATING TENSIONS IN THE EARLY CAREER.- Chapter 3. Academic, Woman, Mother: Negotiating Multiple Subjectivities during Early Career; Agnes Bosanquet.- Chapter 4. Room for Confidence: Early Career Feminists in the English Department; Helena Goodwyn and Emily Jane Hogg.- Chapter 5. "Are you One of Us, or One of Them?" An Autoethnography of a 'Hybrid' Feminist Researcher Bridging Two Worlds; Sophie Alkhaled.- PART III: EXPLORING EXPERIENCES THROUGH INNOVATIVE METHODOLOGIES.- Chapter 6. Exposing the 'Hidden Injuries' of Feminist Early Career Researchers: An Experiential Think Piece about Maintaining Feminist Identities; Anna Tarrant and Emily Cooper.- Chapter 7. Reflecting Realities and Creating Utopias: early Career Feminists (un)Doing International Relations in Finland; Marjaana Jauhola and Saara Särmä.- PART IV: WORK, NETWORKS AND SOCIAL CAPITAL: BUILDING THE ACADEMIC CAREER.- Chapter 8. Challenges to Feminist Solidarity in the Era of New Public Management; Klara Regnö.- Chapter 9. Inequality in Academia: The Way Social Connections Work; Irina Gewinner.- Chapter 10. Feminist Work in Academia and Beyond; Órla Murray, Muireann Crowley, and Lena Wånggren.- PART V: ENVISAGING FEMINIST FUTURES.- Chapter 11. On Becoming 'Bad Subjects': Teaching to Transgress in Neoliberal education; Katherine Natanel.- Chapter 12. Embracing Vulnerability?: Reflection on My Academic Journey as a Japanese Feminist Early Career Research Abroad; Misato Matsuoka.- Chapter 13. "I'm an Early Career Feminist Academic: Get Me Out of Here?" Encountering and Resisting the Neoliberal Academy; The Res-Sisters.- Conclusion: Final Thoughts and Future Directions; Rachel Thwaites and Amy Pressland.

This book highlights the experiences of feminist early career researchers and teachers from an international perspective in an increasingly neoliberal academy. It offers a new angle on a significant and increasingly important discussion on the ethos of higher education and the sector's place in society.

Higher education is fast-changing, increasingly market-driven, and precarious. In this context entering the academy as an early career academic presents both challenges and opportunities. Early career academics frequently face the prospect of working on fixed term contracts, with little security and no certain prospect of advancement, while constantly looking for the next role. Being a feminist academic adds a further layer of complexity: the ethos of the marketising university where students are increasingly viewed as 'customers' may sit uneasily with a politics of equality for all. Feminist values and practice can provide a means of working through the challenges, but may also bring complications.