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Today @NewcastleUniUCU #UCUStrikesBack is focussing on the fight against casualisation. My @NuAntiCas colleagues have been doing an awesome job sharing stories of the impact of casualisation so please check them out!
I haven't shared my story so far, because it's hard to summarise as a tight narrative for social media, and bc a lot of my experience of casualisation is in Australia not the UK: but that's part of the problem. The neo-liberal university is an international system #UCUStrikesBack
I'm a middle-aged ECR. I finished my Hons year in 2001 + had a life outside academia: got married, went travelling, had another kid, renovated a house, spent 7 years as a communications manager for @UnitingChurchWA and supported my husband through his BSc #UCUStrikesBack
What all this means is that I have a family and a home and a mortgage (tho I can't live there or fully pay it right now, but more on that later) which is a huge step in front of many of my academic colleagues #UCUStrikesBack
So in 2013 I finally started my PhD, at a university in Sydney that's a 5-hr planecride from my home in Perth. I know lots of Drs outside academia so had no preconceived ideas of where it would lead. I just relished the idea of 3 yrs researching!! #UCUStrikesBack
And it was awesome! I had a tax-free Australian govt scholarship that was almost enough to cover the mortgage, I could fit work around school hours for the first time ever, and it was MUCH less stressful than my job. Happy days! #UCUStrikesBack
But then in my 3rd yr, #boganboy had his diving accident and I became the sole income earner for our family. I had to push through the fog of grief to finish my thesis so I could pick up more casual teaching work (I was already doing a bit by this stage) #UCUStrikesBack
I submitted in July 2016, but in Aus there's no viva - you just wait. I waited+worked. But that summer (Dec/Jan/Feb) I had no work - i was on the dole when I got my feedback + had applied for enough jobs by then to know i was facing at least another year of this #UCUStrikesBack
Coz a PhD is just a license to operate, but it wont get you an academic job without publications (in my field preferably a book) and no-one pays you to write those. The system is set up for people who are independently wealthy and have time to write #UCUStrikesBack
Anyway, a year later, I nearly knackered myself supporting my family (working 8 diff contracts at 1 point!) + writing a book + finishing house renovations so we could actually leave if I found a job somewhere else. And I did!! #UCUStrikesBack
So now I'm in Newcastle on a 3-yr contract, having moved my family across the world. (If you supported #jeffmuststay you know the story). And 3 yrs feels amazing! It makes such a huge difference not having to spruike for work every couple of months #UCUStrikesBack
But I have no idea what happens after Jan 2021. I know I'm good at this. I'd like it to be my career - I can't really go back to my old one anyway! - but where and how? My daughter is in her last year's of high school, my husband's visa runs out April 2021... #UCUStrikesBack
Sometimes it just feels like a huge gamble that I'm going to lose. Maybe I left my run too late. Who knows? But the point of this massive thread is that it's not a simple 1-uni problem, it's global + systemic. But change needs to start somewhere!!! #UCUStrikesBack
