Notions of Human Capital and Academic Identity in the PhD: Narratives of the Disempowered

ABSTRACT

An important component of PhD students’ educational experiences is the understanding they develop of their academic identity. In this study, we explore PhD students’ expectations and lived realities during their studies through the lens of Bourdieu’s theory of practice. We show that doctoral students perceive the PhD as an all-consuming endeavor and, at the same time, a degree of competing demands. Importantly, several doctoral students’ academic identities were laden with conceptions of marginalization, which evoked feelings of disempowerment and lead to a lack of agency. Therefore, this study advocates for a doctoral environment where different forms of human capital are valued and the voices of PhD students are respected within the academy. This will ensure that future scholars are able to enter the academy with a strong sense of who they are and where they fit within their field.

KEYWORDS:

• Doctoral education
• academic identity
• capital
• agency
• disempowerment
• marginalization

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the participants in this study for being willing to share their experiences within academia. We would also like to acknowledge the members of our writing group for helpful discussions during the preparation of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

We have no known conflict of interest to disclose.