Thesis

‘Seeing things more queerly’ : a critical analysis of the emotions and realities of a working-class queer early career researcher in the Scottish higher education sector

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Awarding institution
  • University of Strathclyde
Date of award
  • 2026
Thesis identifier
  • T18069
Person Identifier (Local)
  • 201871334
Qualification Level
Qualification Name
Department, School or Faculty
Abstract
  • As an early career researcher (ECR), it is common to feel feelings of failure. As a working class (WC) individual in higher education (HE), it is common to feel feelings of failure and that you don’t have, as Pierre Bourdieu might say, a ‘feel for the game’. As a working-class queer (WCQ) in HE, that feeling of failure is underscored by a disoriented life that does not ‘fit’ the heteronormative ‘successes’ of what an ECR ‘should be’. As a ‘feminised’ queer man, their formations of gender might ‘naturally’ feel or appear to align more to that of WC women. Therefore, it could be argued, that feminised work might be funnelled towards me whilst the ‘real men’ get on with the important work within academia; work valued by the institution and the broader sector. In this autoethnographical layered account, I face my own failures as a precariously employed WCQ ECR trying to make sense of did I fail my first attempt at a PhD like I was structurally ‘supposed to’? Drawing on concepts and theory routed in psychodynamics of work, positive psychology, affect theory, queer theory and sociology, I construct a ‘trial set’ of lens I can look through and ‘refract’ my gaze to ‘really’ see what was at play during my failure. I aim (and want) to see things more queerly. I learn (and unlearn) ways of being in and navigating the world around me, against a backdrop where society and the promise of the good life is ‘frayed’; near impossible to achieve. Instead, however, what if I was to view this failure queerly? Maybe I was ‘doomed’ for failure all along. And perhaps ‘getting lost’ on my ECR journey meant I found a new way of ‘doing’ research. I found a new way of teaching. I found a new way of seeing my life and society more queerly, shedding away the pressures of heteronormativity and the farse that is meritocracy. I found a new way to value care, from my queer collective, my work collective and care towards my students. This project does not aim to explain the failures of all WCQ ECRs (or workers more broadly). But it does aim to hold a mirror up to HE and society on the experiences of precarity in the Scottish HE sector. And most importantly to me, this project might contribute towards an intersectional WCQ reading list inspiring and spurring on the inclusive feminist classrooms our universities desperately need.
Advisor / supervisor
  • Briken, Kendra, 1972-
Resource Type
DOI

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