A case study of teacher education in the UK and in Australia illustrates the prevailing assumptions of policy makers that practices ‘travel’. Having several years’ experience in University middle management in the UK (as Head of School, Director of ITE, programme leader) the author was recently appointed as Dean in an Australian University, and charged with bringing about change in an education grouping in which teacher education plays a significant part. This inquiry takes place through the kaleidoscope of simultaneously recognising and misrecognising a new set of practices, whilst being positioned through them as newcomer in similarly ambiguous ways. The author reflects, from the perspective of familiarity with the requirements of academic leadership, on the ways that emotion plays with these concepts of misrecognition and recognition (Hey, 2011). Emails (anonymised) sent by the author during the first 12 months of her appointment were subsequently analysed using grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) to inform reflection and identify changes in perspective. A feminist framework of self as author (Author, 2010) is used to position the construction of public persona in ways that draw attention to the interplay between emotion and practice in constructing an identity as an academic leader.