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Mature-age early-career academic identity formation during crises
Journal article

Mature-age early-career academic identity formation during crises

Lee-Ann Ewing
International journal of educational management, Vol.First online, pp.1-24
25/05/2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM-04-2025-0230
Appears in  Recent Faculty of Education Publications

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Abstract

Academic identity Pandemic Crisis Early-career academic Job demands-resources theory Remote teaching Reflexive narrative
Purpose: Drawing on job demands-resources theory, this reflexive narrative explores the author's lived experiences during the longest COVID lockdown in the world (262 days) and how this shaped her identity as both an early-career academic (ECA) and a PhD candidate, across three universities and three states. Design/methodology/approach: Narrative inquiry is effective in understanding lived experiences. Data include the author's notes and diaries from March 2020 through March 2025, all institutional emails on COVID-19 in 2020 and personal photographs. Together, these complimentary archival sources document the author's lived experience as an ECA navigating COVID-19 lockdowns. Data are analysed inductively and themes generated recursively following a reflexive analytical approach. Findings: The lockdowns shaped the author's academic identity in five ways: Her digital competence and confidence as an ECA increased exponentially. The pandemic became her PhD dissertation topic, significantly re-shaping her fledgling academic identity. Third, the pandemic reaffirmed her preference for on-campus delivery. The pandemic also resulted in her relocating to a new state and a new university, while preparing her for future crises, such as cyclone Alfred in 2025. Originality/value: This reflexive narrative extends research on ECA identity formation by demonstrating how prolonged crisis conditions actively shape identity through intensified role negotiation, dual ECA-doctoral candidate positioning, mature-age entry pathways and the interaction between structural disruption and subjective sense making.

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