Positioning ourselves in our academic lives: exploring personal/professional identities, voice and agency

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a rationale for understanding personal/professional identities to support personal/professional learning and positioning in academe and higher education. It explains the importance of women writing and speaking out the stories of their lives (everyday and academic), having their voices heard and responded to, and using embodied knowledge to question and challenge workplace systems and structures of power and sexism and invisibility. Importantly, this paper opens the space for women’s visibility, voice and agency in academic and educational life.

KEYWORDS:

• Women in academe
• embodied knowledge
• identities
• feminist politics
• writing as research
• agency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Alison L. Black http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0515-6456