In the last decades, the academic profession (Santiago & Carvalho, 2011) has undergone profound transformations, accompanying social changes and modifications in the role of higher education in the context of knowledge and plural societies.

The social need for higher education and the massification and democratization of access have also led to a large increase in the number of higher education teachers (Thomas Dotta, Lopes, & Leite, 2019 ). In fact, in the 80’s and 90’s, a large number of teachers (particularly women) began their academic careers.

In these and subsequent decades, the number of students multiplied, and their diversity became ever greater (ibidem). Simultaneously, the image of higher education institutions, new and old, university or polytechnic, was transformed in a profound way, as was the work of their faculty members. (Santos, Pereira &Lopes, 2021)

In what concerns academic work, changes have been felt in all its dimensions  - teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and management – but teaching and research are those that stand out as the ones that characterize the work of all academics in a more generalized way (Perkins, 2019)..

The Bologna Process in the case of Europe, and the rise of neo-liberalism and managerialism in the world in general, have altered the characteristics of academic work, especially affecting teaching and research (Santigo & Carvalho, 2011). As a result, the lifeworld of academics has changed profoundly (Peralta, 2019; Gaus & Hall, 2015) forcing changes in academic identities (Ching, 2021; Djerasimovic & Villani, 2020)). If some of the changes are associated with social and technological evolution and development, others have a clear ideological character with the power of "domestication of bodies" and subjection of subjectivities that Foucault talked about. In face of this academics´ reactions were different according to a number of variables, individual, institutional, scientific field and geographical (eg. Lust, Huber & Junne, 2019;  Dugas, Summers, Harris & Stich, 2018; Henkel, 2005).)

Those who entered university in the 1980s and 1990s experienced all these transformations and are now in the last stage of their careers.  What was the subjective impact of these changes on these academics? What individual differences can be detected and why? Why did some adhere to them? Why did others resist them?

This communication proposal stems from a research project which intends to know and make explicit the subjective experiences of teachers of the transformations they have lived, through the subjective identification of its factors, while keeping the memory of academic lives in the last three decades. Furthermore, it aims to identify styles of identity reconfigurations.

The research, which aims to encompass academics from different national contexts, namely Europe, in order to better identify the role contextual and individual variables play in these experiences, has so far been conducted in the Portuguese context.

This is an exploratory study, in terms of objectives, and uses the biographical narrative approach (Lopes, 2011) as a research strategy. Eight biographical narratives were collected with higher education teachers who began their academic careers in the 80’s: three men (from the areas of education, psychology and sports) and five women (from the areas of medicine, nursing and engineering). The collection was carried out through unstructured interviews with two guidelines: a) Entry as a teacher in higher education b) Stages of the professional path in academia (namely changes at the level of teaching and research - continuities and ruptures) The analysis was inspired by Goodson and Ümarik (2019) in the importance recognized to the contextual dimension of life stories and by Polkinghorne (1995) regarding the consideration of two analysis strands - the paradigmatic strand and the narrative strand. The paradigmatic strand (like thematic analysis) made it possible to identify themes in which discourses are organized, in order to account for the changes as experienced. The narrative analysis, involving the typification of the accounts from an interpretive and hermeneutic effort, allowed us to identify a typology of subjective experiences.

In the paradigmatic aspect, the analysis allowed us to identify 6 dimensions of change: research; pedagogical; institutional; temporal; personal and relational. The research dimension includes the enlargement and internationalization of research teams. Funding policies and precarity of research teams are the major obstacles identified. The pedagogical dimension describes the self-made university teacher. Teachers learn to teach with the support of their peers and their senior teachers and with little institutional encouragement. Changes in the institutional dimension refer to the process of growth and complexification of the different faculties. In the temporal dimension there is a trend for fast and more research and the need to be aware of its possible dysfunctional effects. The personal dimension refers to the conciliation of academic, familiar, and professional lives. Personal values and critical knowledge appear as important resources for personal and professional integrity. The relational dimension refers to a shift in the proximal and informal level of teacher-student relations in the 80’s and 90’s, to a more diverse and complex network of human relations. The narrative analysis allowed the identification of two types of identity adaptation: the committed to citizenship; and the pragmatic. In the first one, the academic career is a life purpose. There is a passion and commitment in the production and transmission of knowledge useful to society. The close and inspirational contact and support of senior teachers is a common axis in this identity-type. In the pragmatic identity-type the academic career emerges as a job opportunity. There is a sense of effort associated with the lack of experience in teaching, the high number of working hours and the precarious working conditions at this stage of the career. The appreciation of the academic career comes later. Freedom of research and collaborative work continue being valued.

Ching, G. S. (2021). Academic Identity and Communities of Practice: Narratives of Social Science Academics Career Decisions in Taiwan. Education Sciences, 11(8). doi:10.3390/educsci11080388 Djerasimovic, S., & Villani, M. (2020). Constructing academic identity in the European higher education space: Experiences of early career educational researchers. European Educational Research Journal, 19(3), 247-268. doi:10.1177/1474904119867186 Dugas, D., Summers, K. H., Harris, L. N., & Stich, A. E. (2018). Shrinking Budgets, Growing Demands: Neoliberalism and Academic Identity Tension at Regional Public Universities. Aera Open, 4(1). doi:10.1177/2332858418757736 Gaus, N., & Hall, D. (2015). Neoliberal governance in Indonesian universities: the impact upon academic identity. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 35(9-10), 666-682. doi:10.1108/ijssp-12-2014-0120 Goodson, I. F., & Ümarik, M. (2019). Changing policy contexts and teachers´ work-lifenarratives: the case of Estonian vocational teachers. Teachers and Teaching, 25(5), 589-602. doi:10.1080/13540602.2019.1664300. Henkel, M. (2005). Academic identity and autonomy in a changing policy environment. Higher Education, 49(1-2), 155-176. doi:10.1007/s10734-004-2919-1 Lopes, A. (2011). Las historias de vida en la formación docente: Orígenes y niveles de laconstrucción de identidad de los profesores. [Life histories in teacher education: origins and levels ofteachers identity construction]. In F. Hernández, J. Sancho, & I. Rivas (Eds.), Historias de vida eneducación: Biografías en contexto (pp. 23-33). Barcelona: ESBRINA-RECERCA/U.Barcelona. Lust, M., Huber, C., & Junne, J. (2019). Academic Identity as a Discursive Resource for Resistance: The Case of Quality Management in German Higher Education Institutions. Higher Education Policy, 32(1), 49-69. doi:10.1057/s41307-018-0116-6 Peralta, M. I. J. (2019). Academic identity: A franchise under construction. Educar, 55(2), 543-560. doi:10.5565/rev/educar.960 Perkins, G. (2019). The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and Its Impact on Academic Identity Within A Research-Intensive University. Higher Education Policy, 32(2), 297-319. doi:10.1057/s41307-018-0082-z. Polkinghorne, D. E. (1995). Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. InternationalJournal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 8(1), 5-23. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839950080103. Santiago, R. , Carvalho, T. (2011). Mudança no conhecimento e na profissão acadêmica em Portugal. Cadernos de Pesquisa, 41(14), 402-426. Santos, C., Pereira, F., & Lopes, A. (2021). Teaching, research, and publication: the challenges of academic work. In I. Huet, T. Pessoa & F. Murta (Eds.), Excellence in teaching and learning in higher education: Institutional policies, research and practices in Europe (pp. 199-216). Coimbra: Coimbra University Press. doi:10.14195/978-989-26-2134-0. Thomas Dotta, Lopes, A., L, Leite, C. (2018). O movimento do acesso ao ensino superior em Portugal de 1960 a 2017: uma análise ecológica, Arquivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas, (27)146 DOI: 10.14507/epaa.27.4195.