Navigating Precarity in Higher Education issue

This issue of Exchanges aims to create a collective space for discussion and reflection on the precarious working conditions that have made careers in HE both less linear and less secure. By engaging with the lived experiences and realities of those navigating this increasingly precarious landscape, we hope to provide a space to articulate the structural, professional, and emotional dimensions of precarious career paths, especially for ECRs. Issue editors wish to highlight voices that often go unheard, including those in short-term, hybrid, or interdisciplinary roles as well as those who have moved, or are considering moving, to careers beyond academia. Our goal is to explore not just the frustrations related to precarity but also responses and potential solutions: We invite researchers and practitioners with lived experiences and interest in precarity in HE to weigh in on how this crisis might be best addressed at the institutional, social, and political levels.

By bringing together both data-driven and more qualitative, reflective contributions, this issue will encourage critical discussion of how precarity is created, experienced, and managed across different contexts. It seeks not only to document the challenges faced by employees at various career stages, but also to explore coping strategies, strategies for success, forms of solidarity, and opportunities to support more sustainable and rewarding academic or alternative careers.

Suggested Topics

Contributions may engage with, but are not limited to, the following interrelated themes:

•  Community responses to precarity, including mentoring, peer support, networking, and other forms of collective action
•  The emotional and relational impacts of precarious careers in HE, including issues of mental health, wellbeing, belonging, and professional identity
• The role of digital technologies, performance metrics, and evaluation systems in shaping work practices, expectations, and experiences of precarity in HE
• The influence of policy, governance, and institutional practices on employment conditions, job security, and efforts to address precarity in HE
• Early-career, mid-career, or senior academics’ experiences of hybrid, non-linear, and alternative career pathways within and beyond academia.

Submission Types

Accepted submissions will fall into one of three broad categories:

       1) Original research articles (4,000-8,000 words, subject to peer review

• Qualitative or data-driven studies that examine precarity in contemporary HE, including its impact on academic and professional work, identity, and career development and pathway
• Case studies of initiatives that seek to address precarity, including programmes and practices that support hybrid careers and alternative career pathways

       2) Critical Reflections (1,000-4,000 words)

• First-person, research-supported reflective accounts of navigating precarity across different career paths, including hybrid careers and transitions within, across, and beyond academia.
• Policy commentaries that critically examine how governance, funding schemes, employment practices, and wider sector developments shape experiences of HE precarity

     3) Conversations (1,000-4,000 words)

• Interviews with researchers, educators, administrators and other relevant stakeholders that explore experiences of precarity in HE.

Submission Guidelines

To be considered as a contributor to the issue, please submit an abstract of up to 250 words, including your name and institutional affiliation, by Monday, 19 October 2026, at the following link: Expressions of Interest: Navigating Precarity in Higher Education.

Once invited to submit a full paper, you can do so via Exchanges online submissions portal. The portal will open approximately a month before the submission deadline.

Please be sure to refer to the Exchanges submissions and author guidelines before submitting. You should also include a note signifying the submission is for the ‘Precarity in HE’ issue when prompted.