Introduction

It has been proposed that academics have a responsibility to remind people of their histories (Bullough, 2020), and in starting this chapter with reference to my own educational experiences, I am reminded of Daniel Nehring and Kristiina Brunila’s suggestion: ‘how, in order to make sense of the patterns of domination, contestation and resistance that emerge from the contemporary unmaking and remaking of the university, it is necessary to make sense of the everyday forms of practice and modes of subjectivation that characterise contemporary academic labour’ (see Chapter 1 this book).

When I first started working in universities, there were face-to face lectures delivered in large auditoriums, academics had their own offices in which to conduct PhD supervision, hot desking was not yet a concept, and neither was booking a private room if a student dropped by in distress requiring assistance. There was no such thing as Zoom or QR codes to access campus facilities, and workload was equally divided between teaching, research and service in a 40/ 40/ 20 model. Jill Blackmore (2001: 353) has noted how

Blackmore goes on to say ‘Perhaps the next “phase” will be for university courses for the masses to be written by instructional designers, accredited by a shrinking core of university-based academics, tendered to private providers for online delivery, out-sourced to local tutors in global locations, with clearly stated competencies assessment’ (Blackmore, 2001: 359).

C. Wright Mills’ exhortation to critically make use of ‘the personal uneasiness of individuals [that] is focused upon explicit troubles’ (1970: 11–12) stimulated the impetus for the writing of this chapter from my own experience of angst as Blackmore’s polemic proposal is increasingly seen in practice.