Call for Papers: Navigating Precarity in Higher Education issue

2026-08-11

Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal

CALL FOR PAPERS: 'Navigating Precarity in Higher Education'

Key dates

Abstract submission deadline: 19 October 2026

Notification of abstract acceptance: 30 October 2026

Full manuscript submission deadline: 29 January 2027

Anticipated publication date: November 2027

 

Context

Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal (ISSN 2053-9665) is pleased to invite submissions for our upcoming issue 'Navigating Precarity in Higher Education'. While job precarity is not a new phenomenon, it continues to have an increasingly significant impact on academic and professional work within higher education (HE). It is associated with increased workloads, poor work-life balance, uncertainty about the future, and limited opportunities for career progression and recognition. The effects of precarity are not only structural but also personal and relational. Ongoing insecurity shapes how people live, the risks they are willing to take, and what they feel they can achieve, which can ultimately result in a weakened sense of self-worth and belonging. Pressures to remain productive and competitive can contribute to anxiety, stress, and burnout. These experiences are not occasional side effects but baked-in features of academic and professional life in contemporary HE.

These effects are not experienced equally. Research shows that gender (Morris et al., 2024), race (Osho & Alormele, 2025), and caregiving responsibilities (Etheridge, 2025) influence who carries the greatest burden, whose experiences are treated as exceptional, and whose are normalised and overlooked. In this sense, precarity is both an economic condition and a factor that shapes identity, working relationships, and professional development.

Many factors have contributed to the growth of precarity in HE, including declining public funding, institutional restructuring, market-oriented forms of governance, and increasing emphasis on measurable outputs. At the same time, emerging technologies are transforming the HE sectors in significant ways (Watermeyer et al., 2024), influencing employment policies and practices. As a result, opportunities for career continuity, the long-term planning of careers, and professional development have become increasingly limited. Although these challenges are often faced by early-career researchers (ECRs), they extend across the academic and professional workforce. Mid-career and senior academics and HE professionals are also facing redundancy, stalled progression, and the disruption of successful career paths that were once considered likely if not inevitable.

Aims

This issue of Exchanges aims to create a collective space for discussion and reflection on the precarious working conditions that have made careers in HE both less linear and less secure. By engaging with the lived experiences and realities of those navigating this increasingly precarious landscape, we hope to provide a space to articulate the structural, professional, and emotional dimensions of precarious career paths, especially for ECRs. Issue editors wish to highlight voices that often go unheard, including those in short-term, hybrid, or interdisciplinary roles as well as those who have moved, or are considering moving, to careers beyond academia. Our goal is to explore not just the frustrations related to precarity but also responses and potential solutions: We invite researchers and practitioners with lived experiences and interest in precarity in HE to weigh in on how this crisis might be best addressed at the institutional, social, and political levels.

By bringing together both data-driven and more qualitative, reflective contributions, this issue will encourage critical discussion of how precarity is created, experienced, and managed across different contexts. It seeks not only to document the challenges faced by employees at various career stages, but also to explore coping strategies, strategies for success, forms of solidarity, and opportunities to support more sustainable and rewarding academic or alternative careers.

Suggested Topics

Contributions may engage with, but are not limited to, the following interrelated themes:

  •  Community responses to precarity, including mentoring, peer support, networking, and other forms of collective action
  •  The emotional and relational impacts of precarious careers in HE, including issues of mental health, wellbeing, belonging, and professional identity
  • The role of digital technologies, performance metrics, and evaluation systems in shaping work practices, expectations, and experiences of precarity in HE
  • The influence of policy, governance, and institutional practices on employment conditions, job security, and efforts to address precarity in HE
  • Early-career, mid-career, or senior academics’ experiences of hybrid, non-linear, and alternative career pathways within and beyond academia.

Submission Types

Accepted submissions will fall into one of three broad categories:

       1)    Original research articles (4,000-8,000 words, subject to peer review

  •       Qualitative or data-driven studies that examine precarity in contemporary HE, including its impact on academic and professional work, identity, and career development and pathway
  •       Case studies of initiatives that seek to address precarity, including programmes and practices that support hybrid careers and alternative career pathways

       2)    Critical Reflections (1,000-4,000 words)

  •       First-person, research-supported reflective accounts of navigating precarity across different career paths, including hybrid careers and transitions within, across, and beyond academia.
  •          Policy commentaries that critically examine how governance, funding schemes, employment practices, and wider sector developments shape experiences of HE precarity

     3)    Conversations (1,000-4,000 words)

  •       Interviews with researchers, educators, administrators and other relevant stakeholders that explore experiences of precarity in HE.

Submission Guidelines

To be considered as a contributor to the issue, please submit an abstract of up to 250 words, including your name and institutional affiliation, by Monday, 19 October 2026, at the following link: Expressions of Interest: Navigating Precarity in Higher Education.

Once invited to submit a full paper, you can do so via Exchanges online submissions portal. The portal will open approximately a month before the submission deadline.

Please be sure to refer to the Exchanges submissions and author guidelines before submitting. You should also include a note signifying the submission is for the ‘Precarity in HE’ issue when prompted.

Authorship

We strongly encourage submissions led by ECRs and those in precarious or non-traditional roles, including those working across hybrid or non-linear career pathways. Collaborative submissions are welcome, particularly where they support or foreground ECR perspectives and experiences. NB: We do not accept submissions written by generative AI. If we have cause to suspect AI has been involved in content creation, we will decline the submission. Please see our Journal Policies page for more.

Contact

For informal inquiries, please contact Exchanges’ Managing Editor-in-Chief Dr Michelle Devereaux at exchangesjournal@warwick.ac.uk.

Issue Editors

Dr Yanyan Li is Associate Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Warwick, where she is also the institutional representative for the British Academy ECR Network and co-chairs the Interdisciplinary Society & Culture Research Spotlight’s ECR Network. Her research interests cover human–AI interaction and AI in higher education.

Dr Tom Ritchie is Reader and Director of Student Experience in Chemistry at the University of Warwick. He specialises in AI education and co-founded the Centre for Belonging in Education.

Dr Mollie Etheridge is Course Director and Lecturer in Sociology at Anglia Ruskin University and a postdoctoral research associate at University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on research culture, parenthood, neoliberal feminism, and body image.

Aoife Prendergast is Careers and Employability Manager at the Technological University of the Shannon, where she leads student work placement and employability initiatives. She co-authored the 2024 volume Social Care Practice Placement: An Essential Guide. 

 

References

Etheridge, M., 2025. ‘Agency and cruel optimism in the care obfuscations of UK-based academic mothers’. Higher Education, Vol. 90, pp. 1219–1234. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-024-01373-0  (last accessed 30 June 2026).

Morris, C. et al., 2024. ‘Gendered precarity in higher education: Subversions, strategies, survival’. Learning and Teaching, 17(3), pp. 1–18. Available at:  https://doi.org/10.3167/latiss.2024.170301 (last accessed 30 June 2026).

Osho, Y. I. & Alormele, N., 2025. ‘Negotiated spaces: Black women academics’ experiences in UK universities’. Higher Education, Vol. 89, pp. 1387–1403. Available at:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-024-01279-x (last accessed 30 June 2026).

Watermeyer, R. P. et al., 2024. ‘Generative AI and the automating of academia’. Postdigital Science and Education, Vol. 6, pp. 446–466. Available at:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-023-00440-6 (last accessed 30 June 2026).