The spaces and places that women casual academics (often fail to) inhabit

Abstract

This paper discusses a research project that aims to address the binary/irony of the central physical and teaching space that women casual academics inhabit within Australian universities, against their lack of presence in the existing discourses around higher education. The invisibility of women casual academics within the discourses around higher education generally, and scholarship around sessional staffing more specifically, provoked an arts-informed narrative inquiry into the lived experience of women casual academics. In this paper I offer an overview of the investigation and present extracts from a verbatim drama based on the words and worlds of women sessional staff in order to create congruency between the narrative communications of women causal academics’ lived experience, and to make a space for the acknowledgement of women casual academics and a place for their voice.