Women’s non-linear journeys into and through higher education are considered through an emergent research process that spans qualitative and post-qualitative practice

Abstract

Founded on and sustained through patriarchal thought and value systems, higher education remains a highly gendered and en/gendering institution. This reflects and simultaneously constitutes epistemological injustice, and creates a viscous cycle or de/privilege. Moreover, regionality de-centres and further marginalizes women academics, and those belonging to other equity groups experience compounding inequities. To understand the experiences of ‘becoming’ women academics within regional universities, we engaged a qualitative collaborative autoethnography and the post-qualitative practice of re-considering and re-inscribing ethnographic ‘data’ that glowed in us. These glowful data illuminated our ‘non-linear’ and non-teleological careering away from, around, and into academia, highlighting synergies between our ‘non-traditional’ academic pathways and (un)structured, in-the-making epistemological practice. In this paper, we share our ‘glowful’ process and consider the possibilities (and tensions) of engaging in research that occupies a space bordering qualitative and post-qualitative inquiry, designed to resist Cartesian and Positivist epistemologies and methodological practices.