Women, 'Failure' and Academia: Activism, Creativity and Critique in the Contemporary University

This open access book examines failures in contemporary academia, and especially the intersections between gender and academic failure. It argues that academic failure is political, and that seemingly personal failures to achieve a standard or expected academic career (tenure, funding, publications, etc.) should be understood in the context of institutional failures and systemic inequalities. Through theoretical discussions and/or personal reflections on their individual experiences of failure, contributors to the volume address how academic failure can illuminate, and sometimes subvert, the institutional barriers often faced by women and women-identifying scholars in the contemporary university. The collection is interdisciplinary, intersectional and international and covers topics such as Covid-19, precarity and job hunting, ethnic diversity, accounts of incomplete research, motherhood and disability within the academy. Contributors include established and emerging scholars in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, the UK and the USA. Conceived as scholarly activism, Women, 'Failure' and Academia aims to interrogate the future of universities and challenge perceptions of failure, especially with regard to women and women-identifying academics. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

Book details

• Publication date: 14 May 2026
• Page count: 264
• Dimensions: Height 238 mm; Width 160 mm; Thickness 20 mm
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9781350528666