We illustrate how Archer's (2003, 2007, 2012) notion of morphogenesis and critical realist ideas around agency, culture and structure, frame a biographical and longitudinal study of academics’ careers. This positions the research as addressing the wider issues of universities’ roles in generating (in)justices across society (Alderson, 2021). We studied 14 academics in social sciences and humanities, through a life-grid methodology and a series of four biographical interviews with each participant, over eleven years. This focus is on the biographical data from seven academics who were born outside the UK and who were from Eastern, Northern and Western Europe, North America and Asia and who had a range of intersecting gender identities. We sought to understand the impact of the 2010 new funding regime for UK undergraduate degrees on universities’ capacity for generating greater justice. In increasingly internationalised and globalised societies, where geographically mobile students are more numerous, it is important to consider the way the system does (not) empower international staff to facilitate a process through which current international injustices, for example, regarding unequal national participation and success in knowledge production, can be addressed (Kim, 2017). Our research is based on the notion that to address such injustices a diverse social science and humanities academic workforce is needed. These disciplines are at the foreground of tackling injustices and inequalities but to address global and national problems diverse staff need to participate in the creation of knowledge, development of teaching and in administrating and leading universities (Ahmed, 2021; Bhopal, 2016; Blackmore, 2022; Dolmage, 2018; Lipton, 2020; McLean et al, 2019; Walker, 2010). In the UK, where this study is set, a growing international workforce provides opportunities for generating justice through their work (e.g. Eslava, 2020 on teaching). However, as we show there are contradictions between the international (and sometimes national) call for greater collaboration across institutions and countries and the institutionally and nationally competitive agendas associated with league tables and these targets associated with the neo-liberal funding models (Kim, 2017). Studying the decisions and actions of academics reveals whether universities are moving towards or away from social justice (Galaz-Fontes et al, 2016). The Archer-informed analysis provides a lens and a language which draws out the process as enacted by the academics and also facilitates articulation of the way that the different levels of the university and society can produce emergent environments, relationships and artefacts that overall hinder efforts towards global justice.

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