This book illuminates international voices of those who feel empowered to do things differently in higher education, providing inspiration to those who are seeking guidance, reassurance or a beacon of hope.
Doing things differently comes with an awareness and curiosity to explore what can be. Increasingly, more and more professionals in higher education are choosing themselves, happiness, families, relationships, kindness, and compassion over arbitrary notions of institutional prestige, continuous pressure to overwork, and competitiveness with others. The chapters in this book do more than highlight flaws in the system, they call for proactive engagement in interrupting and reimagining what is broken. The authors share their own experiences as a way of encouraging readers to take small steps towards self-care, to notice their surroundings, and to embrace change as an empowering tool. The focus is on becoming the change we aspire to see, with a collective readiness to instigate positive transformations.
Sharing ambitious ideas to encourage change, this book is a valuable resource for those seeking to enhance their self-care and wellbeing in the higher education context, and for those seeking to engage with others in support of these efforts.
This book illuminates international voices of those who feel empowered to do things differently in higher education, providing inspiration to those who are seeking guidance, reassurance or a beacon of hope.
Part 1: The Setting
1. Rethinking Expectations in Academia: How
Lowering Expectations of Ourselves and Others Improves Wellbeing
2. Laughter
as survival, selfcare, solidarity, and resistance in academia
3. Queer
visibility and self-care in academia: Exploring the contradictions of
identity, activism and silence
4. Killing the Binary Part 2: Repositioning
Learning and Teaching for Self and Others
5. Confronting failure as
self-care: Critical honesty as a springboard for positive change in teaching
and learning
6. Exploring belonging: Reflections on valuing lived
experiences and centering healing in compassionate and meaningful
interactions
7. Beware the awareness gap
8. Things Differently through the
Lenses of Gestalt Philosophy and Practice-based Learning: A Hopeful Outlook
on the Benefits of Co-creating with Students to Support Wellbeing in Higher
Education
9. Its about Place: Inside Indigenising the curriculum Part 3:
Connection, Interconnection, and Companions
10. A meditation on the idea of
heterotopia and the need for spaces of hope and possibility in higher
education
11. How A Unique Student Fellowship Model Enables Proactive
Wellbeing
12. Fostering an ecosystem of connection
13. A cat named Jiji:
belonging, identity and navigating cultural displacement in academia Part 4:
Emerging Researchers, Mentoring and Finding One's Self
14. Raising
self-awareness by thinking beyond the boundary fence: Exploring the potential
boundaries around international doctoral students
15. With awareness comes
great power: Self-discovery and acceptance as strategies for thriving in
academia
16. Does belonging affect wellbeing? A researcher experiences of
transition from a conflict-affected country to Australia Part 5: Taking a
Closer Look at Leadership
17. Leading with kindness: A self-care (and
survival) way of being for an academic administrator
18. Expansive
Leadership, Expansive Engagement: Two viewpoints on learning into spacious
leading
19. Finding an equilibrium? Is that possible when you are thrown
into leadership?
Narelle Lemon, VC Professoriate Research Fellow at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia, is an interdisciplinary scholar specialising in arts, education, and positive psychology. Her research focuses on enhancing wellbeing literacy in K-12 schools, teacher education, higher education, and community settings, emphasising evidence-based practices for proactive flourishing.
