ABSTRACT
The chapter is written by Emily Play, an academic specializing in studies of academic identities and insecurities. She depicts the career trajectory of an academic in transition. Mark Hughes (MH) ‘accepted’ voluntary redundancy from business school employment on the 31st July 2019. Emily shares a very informal and at times critical portrait of MH. What happens when the institutional mask (staff profile) is taken away? How does exiting institutional academia inform understanding the lives of those still employed in academia? How do you academically occupy yourself when it is too soon to retire, yet you are no longer in institutional employment?
A series of lengthy post-redundancy research interviews with MH inform this portrait. As a connection developed, the portrait foregrounds some of those deeper existentialist aspects more traditional social science displays might miss. The portrait conveys the angst of an ageing academic facing the identity threat of losing his academic identity. As a defiant academic he now parodies the corporate university world of managed dissemination, publication conventions, staff profiles and videos. An alternative post-institutional academic life emerges characterized by disobedience, creativity, autonomy and freedom, but most importantly now embracing fun.
