Technologies of Self-Care in Precarious Neoliberal Academia: Women Academics’ Craftwork as Strategies of Coping and Complicity

Jenny K Rodriguez, Maranda Ridgway, Louise Oldridge and Michaela Edwards
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Jenny K Rodriguez: University of Manchester, UK
Maranda Ridgway: Nottingham Trent University, UK
Louise Oldridge: Nottingham Trent University, UK
Michaela Edwards: University of York, UK

Work, Employment & Society, 2025, vol. 39, issue 4, 836-858

Abstract: This article explores the use of craftwork as a technology of self-care by women academics to cope with work demands and commodified narratives in academia. It combines discussions about work pressures in academia and technologies of the self to theorise self-care strategies used to navigate academic demands and identify new research avenues. Through the memory work of the four women academic authors, the article shows craftwork as a strategy of self-care to achieve self-control, self-preservation and self-(re)positioning. The article extends the theorisation of self-care, showing its simultaneous function as a coping and complicity mechanism that responds to and engages with individualised well-being narratives in academia. It also advances and complicates understanding of how technologies of self-care sustain the power structures of the academic labour process, showing the visceral and emotional dimensions of these technologies. The article outlines the contours of a research agenda to interrogate ethical self-care in academia.

Keywords: craftwork; neoliberal academia; self-care; technologies of the self; women academics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:39:y:2025:i:4:p:836-858

DOI: 10.1177/09500170241297523

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