ABSTRACT

The workplace has significant influence over our sense of wellbeing. It is a place where many of us spend significant amounts of our time, where we find meaning, and often form a sense of identity. Creating a Place for Self-care and Wellbeing in Higher Education explores the notion of finding meaning across academia as a key part of self-care and wellbeing.

In this edited collection, the authors navigate how they find meaning in their work in academia by sharing their own approaches to self-care and wellbeing. In the chapters, visual narratives intersect with lived experience and proactive strategies that reveal the stories, dilemmas, and tensions of those working in higher education. This book illuminates how academics and higher education professionals engage in constant reconstruction of their identity and work practices, placing self-care at the centre of the work they do, as well as revealing new ways of working to disrupt the current climate of dismissing self-care and wellbeing.

Designed to inspire, support, and provoke the reader as they navigate a career in higher education, this book will be of great interest to professionals and researchers specifically interested in studies in higher education, wellbeing, and/or identity.

chapter Chapter 1|9 pages

Self-care is worthy of our attention

Using our self-interest for good in higher education

part 1|76 pages

Nurturing self

chapter Chapter 2|22 pages

2019

A year in self-care

chapter Chapter 3|12 pages

Juggling the triad

Caring for yourself with a block-mode approach to research, teaching, and service

chapter Chapter 4|13 pages

The rewriting on the walls

An autoethnographic journey into wellbeing in neoliberal academia

chapter Chapter 5|12 pages

Being at one with myself

Embracing the teacher identity

chapter Chapter 6|15 pages

Pendulation

Awakening to rest

part II|57 pages

Supporting, nurturing, and encouraging others

chapter Chapter 9|13 pages

Finding my centre

Integrating contemplative practices, my children, and higher education into a balanced life

chapter Chapter 10|13 pages

Exploring cultural identity through coffee

Steps towards self-care

part III|52 pages

Facilitating institutional change and forming a community of scholars who promote wellbeing

chapter Chapter 11|12 pages

Bushwhacking a path forward

Contemplative pedagogy for wellbeing in higher education

chapter Chapter 14|10 pages

Stepping into a shared vulnerability

Creating and promoting a space for self-care and wellbeing in higher education