Background Context

Higher education has undergone significant transformations in recent decades, shaped by globalisation, marketisation and increasing accountability measures (Marginson, 2000; Olssen & Peters, 2005). Framed by the promissory logic of neoliberalism (Beckert, 2019), these shifts have fostered "academic capitalism" (Jessop, 2017), where academic labour is increasingly assessed by profitability and output (Slaughter & Leslie, 2001). This phenomenon is prevalent in European and other university systems across the globe, reflecting the transnational nature of contemporary higher education (Djerasimovic & Villani, 2020; Siekkinen et al., 2020).

Consequently, academics worldwide now navigate a complex terrain of competing demands, shifting identities and evolving notions of scholarly work (Henkel, 2005; Archer, 2008). They face intensifying workloads, pressure to secure funding, demands for 'excellence' and the need to demonstrate impact (Tight, 2010; Watermeyer, 2015). These pressures, compounded by employment precarity and eroding academic freedom (Courtois & O'Keefe, 2015), have cultivated an affective environment of instability, burnout and self‑doubt (Brunila & Nehring, 2023).

Within this turbulent context, academics negotiate their professional identities, balancing personal values against institutional imperatives (Clegg, 2008). The emotional labour involved is significant yet often overlooked (Constanti & Gibbs, 2004). Discourses of overwork and exhaustion have become normalised and sometimes valorised as "heroic" (Skea, 2021; Kidman, 2020), while many academics experience a "passion trap" of simultaneous pleasure and exploitation (Luczaj, 2020). These experiences, though locally specific, share common threads across global contexts and deeply affect academics’ emotional and experiential lives.

This presentation considers how printmaking can render these complexities legible, using a series of woodblock prints to evoke tacit meanings, emotional registers and paradoxes of identity that often elude textual accounts.

Objectives

The objectives of this study are to:

• Produce a curated suite of woodblock prints that explore and communicate the affective landscapes and material realities of academic work through visual metaphor and printmaking practice.
• Demonstrate and theorise arts‑based approaches as rigorous analytic practices within higher education research, showing how creative production can function as data, interpretation and scholarly output.
• Create an integrated visual–textual portfolio that engages with international debates on accountability, professionalism and policy, fostering critical reflection and dialogue about how systemic forces shape academic identities and labour.

Research Question / Problematic

The problematic underpinning this inquiry is:

How can a series of woodblock prints that weave personal and collective narratives illuminate the affective and paradoxical dimensions of academic life and engage diverse audiences?

This question is framed to:

• Examine how material and compositional choices in woodblock printmaking function as analytic practice, generating insights into academics’ affective and paradoxical experiences.
• Translate individual narratives into collective accounts that address debates on accountability, professionalism and policy.
• Explore modes of presenting and sharing the visual–textual ensemble with diverse audiences (scholars, policymakers and the public) to provoke reflection, dialogue and potential impact.

Conceptual / Theoretical Framework

The framework for this project integrates theories of academic work with arts‑based inquiry, using the carnivalesque as a bridging concept. It draws on supercomplexity and academic capitalism (Barnett, 2000; Slaughter & Leslie, 2001) to contextualise higher education's contested nature, and on 'cruel optimism' (Berlant, 2011) to explore academic identity negotiation. Arts‑based research (Barone & Eisner, 2012) and printmaking as research (McMordie & Stempel, 2023) legitimise aesthetic inquiry and embodied experience in research. The carnivalesque (Bakhtin, 1984) and world‑travelling (Lugones, 1987) enable critique through humour, inversion and perspective‑shifting.

These lenses inform both the making processes (material and compositional choices) and the interpretive aims (translation of personal narratives into collective forms and dissemination to varied audiences). The project treats printmaking not merely as illustration, aiming to provoke scholarly and public engagement with the affective realities of academic labour.

This study employs an arts based design that positions creative practice as both inquiry method and scholarly output (Barone & Eisner, 2012; Leavy, 2015; Sullivan, 2005). The approach integrates personal reflection, collaborative visual–textual work and woodblock printmaking, emphasising the visual arts’ capacity to capture and communicate complex phenomena (Weber, 2008). Design choices were informed by the theoretical framework: the carnivalesque guided inversion and satire, while supercomplexity encouraged layered, ambiguous compositions. The inquiry draws on multiple data sources: 1. Personal reflective journals spanning decades of academic life. 2. Responses and outputs from several prior research projects relating to academic work. 3. Unobtrusive review of archival and current communications. 4. Scholarly literature on identity, accountability and policy in higher education. The creation process involved a hybrid visual workflow combined traditional drawing, AI assisted image generation and digital manipulation (Photoshop). AI outputs were used exploratorily; prompts, provenance and transformations were documented, and final images were materially reworked to ensure originality and ethical use. Woodblock printmaking is the primary method of representation. Twenty small woodcuts (15 × 20 cm) were produced through iterative cycles of sketching, carving, inking and proofing. Each block passed through multiple design states before reaching its final form. This process links with interconnected spaces of inquiry such as physical engagement, self reflection, playfulness and shared vulnerability (Lavoie & Caine, 2022). The distinctive qualities of printmaking—multiplicity, mediation and materiality (McMordie & Stempel, 2023)—also support the project of exploring academic experiences. Multiplicity allows for iterative exploration of ideas through variations in prints. Mediation acknowledges the transformative process between concept and physical print. Materiality emphasizes the tangible, tactile nature of prints that can engage viewers in unique ways. Analytic approach 1. Familiarisation and memoing across sources with attention to visual elements and shared themes. 2. Collage informed theming, layering textual and visual cues and juxtaposing dissonant elements (Butler Kisber, 2010). 3. Material translation of themes into block designs, blending hand and digital manipulations. 4. Iterative refinement of prints guided by design principles, material possibilities and ethical considerations by synthesising source material into composite imagery to avoid identification of people or places. 5. Using proofs as prompts for further discussion and analysis. Reflexive memoing to track positionality and decision making were also employed in this approach to provide rich, multifaceted insights into the shared experiences of academics in a globalised, supercomplex environment, while exploring the intersection of traditional and digital art-making techniques.

The principal outcome is a curated sequence of twenty woodblock prints with concise analytic narratives, forming a visual–textual ensemble that advances the notion of the "making academic" as scholarly practice. The suite of prints use carnivalesque humour and collage like juxtaposition to defamiliarise everyday academic routines, exposing tensions between institutional demands and individual attachments under conditions of supercomplexity. This work consolidates arts based approaches as analytic practice, showing how making can operate as method and evidence. It situates optimism, disillusionment and attachment within a transnational field of academic identity and produces accessible artefacts. By synthesising personal experience with the lived experiences of numerous academics this research harnesses the power of imagery to convey complex, nuanced messages about shared academic experiences. The exploration of printmaking’s multiplicity, mediation and materiality generates insights not easily achieved through text alone: multiplicity permits variation of meaning; mediation traces transformations from idea to object; materiality invites embodied viewer responses. In this presentation aspects of the creative process and resulting artworks will be shared to discuss and explore the potential of this work in making visible the often-hidden complexities and emotional textures of academic work. There will be opportunities to engage with these visual-textual ensembles, to consider ways of provoking dialogue about the nature of academic labour while inviting audience reflection on their own experiences in academia. The body of work presents a unique, collective visual memoir of academic life in the 21st century, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing academics. Along with the presentation, a series of planned exhibitions and publications will invite international audiences to engage with the affective and structural textures of academic work, provoking sustained dialogue about academic labour and identity in a rapidly changing global context, offering both scholarly insight and public resonance.

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