Introduction

Visibilising inequality 

Through sharing the experiences of intersectionally marginalised members of groups disproportionally represented among long-term casualised academics, this project sheds light on the invisibilised labour, time required and expected, and obstacles encountered by such groups before and during the grant-writing process, in this way revealing exclusions inherent in conventional funding structures. Crucially, precarity does not concern only our working lives; the insecurity it brings spreads into all areas of life and hinders health, family planning, life choices, and living situation. 

The participants on this project tell stories of combining paid and unpaid work, visa applications, health issues, and a range of insecure jobs. They show how the expectation of work ‘in their own time’ is particularly damaging for those who often have extra demands on their time, including for many disabled persons and those with caring responsibilities. Steph, a single mum who juggles housework, childcare, and two insecure jobs, states: ‘Every year I panic – am I going to have a job this year?’ What she calls her ‘own time’ is at night when she does emails for her jobs, after her child has gone to bed. Our participant Chris remarks that ‘The university runs on good will, it runs on everyone doing things in their own time’. Susie, a casualised researcher since 20 years, also remarks on the expectation of working unpaid in academia, for example applying for funding in her own time even when not paid for it; non-academic colleagues think ‘it’s crazy’ but in academia it is normalised. She highlights that not everyone can work for free – with childcare responsibilities, she needs flexibility. Alex is a disabled academic, whose disability has been made worse by precarity. Another participant, Eimhir, explains that she spends her own time managing her chronic health condition alongside paid work, and cannot fit in further unpaid academic work even if this is required to succeed in the university. Olivia, a mum and researcher, keeps her work with her all the time – including when marking dissertations by the pool when the kids are at swimming lessons on Saturday morning. Meanwhile, Gwen is a trans academic in multiple precarious part-time jobs: she gives lectures, does research, organizes events, and supports her colleagues unpaid in her spare time. Like many migrant academics, our participant Robbie’s anxiety around what the next job will look like is exacerbated by his status as a migrant on a visa. 

The pressure to secure external funding is pervasive within academia, yet for those employed on casualised contracts that do not include research or grant writing in their job specifications, the implicit assumptions that grant writing and other career-advancing activities can be done in one’s ‘own time’ becomes a significant barrier to career progression. In addition, many opportunities are advertised to ‘early career’ or ‘mid-career’ researchers, spaces that long-term casualised academics are often excluded from because of eligibility criteria or normative expectations of achievements. These expectations do not reflect the lived experience of individuals in intersectionally marginalised groups who cannot engage in career-advancing pursuits, such as grant writing, ‘in their own time’. By examining and amplifying the voices of those affected, our project visibilises structures of inequality in research funding.