Introduction

Through this chapter I intend to draw attention to some of the silences and secrets of academic life. Over the past few decades, we have observed the gradual neoliberalisation of the academy, with profound changes to the structures of higher education that have included growing corporatisation and privatisation (Graham, 2002; Evans, 2005; Marginson and Considine, 2000; Taylor and Lahad, 2018; Washburn, 2003). Such neoliberalisation has been accompanied by increasing pressures and workloads placed upon academics, with scholars expected to both work harder and faster (Archer, 2008; Clegg, 2010; Harris, 2005; Henderson, 2018; Morrissey, 2013; Read and Bradley, 2018). Academics as a result frequently experience anxiety, stress and shame about their failure to keep up and/or about receiving rejection (Harrowell et al, 2018); this is framed predominantly in an individualistic discourse.

In this chapter, I will draw upon my own experiences as a visually impaired PhD student, highlighting the challenges I face in keeping up with the increasing demands and speed of academic life, along with how such intolerable demands may impede both my personal progress as a disabled scholar and my future career. This may be made even harder by the lack of space created within academia to talk through the emotions, such as feelings of anxiety, stress and personal failure. There are a number of potential reasons why academics may not discuss such feelings, including the potential for it to be professionally embarrassing; it may also leave the researcher feeling exposed or vulnerable (Harrowell et al, 2018). This chapter will be formulated as a political call for change; advocating for (i) recognition of the ways in which exclusions may be brought about through the intensification, ‘extensification’ (Jarvis and Pratt, 2006) and speeding up of academic life, and (ii) the need to create a safe ‘shared emotional space’ (Lacey, 2005: 289) in which academics may explore and work ‘vulnerably’ through the emotions brought about through their daily work.

The neoliberal academy

Over recent decades, neoliberalisation has come to both infiltrate and reshape most aspects of our society through the expansion of free-market logic (Mirowski, 2013). Brown (2015: 176) highlights the extent to which neoliberal logic has impacted upon our society in stating: ‘Neoliberalisam does not merely privatise – turn over to the market for individual production and consumption – what was formerly publicly supported and valued.