WE ARE PRIVILEDGED ACADEMICS, AND YET...

Abstract

In his text, following the metaphor of knighting together our experiences, we elaborated a dialogic autoethnography. We intertwined out histories in an exercise consisting of writing individually and discussing our texts on weekly meetings. This exercise has allowed us to articulate three histories as full time academics dedicated mostly to do research. We took the decision to do this shared inquiry process because we felt an urgent need to reflect on that professional career, which was initiated by vocation decades ago, but as we approach its conclusion due to retirement, has changed its meaning. This, we consider, responds to a great degree to the relevance administrative criteria has taken as opposed to academic criteria in a new context that some have characterized as the neoliberal university.

The three authors —two of whom have done research within the qualitative tradition, autoethnography on this particular case, and one of them who has for many years done research on women job trajectories within public universities— have done an introspection rehearsal with the intention to detect nodal issues and to explore viable alternatives within the contemporary context.