Women, “Failure” and Academia Post-2020 examines failures in modern academia, and especially the intersections between gender and academic failure. It argues that academic failure is political. On the one hand, failure to achieve a “standard” or expected academic career (tenure, funding, publications, etc.) undermines the status quo of academic systems, at the same time that these seemingly personal failures unveil systemic failures. On the other hand, those of us who are able to stop and celebrate, or even reflect on, such subversive potentials of failure often enjoy a certain degree of privilege, not allowed to others struggling for professional and perhaps economic survival.

The collection is interdisciplinary, intersectional and international and covers topics such as Covid-19, precarity and job hunting, ethnic diversity, accounts of incomplete research, motherhood and disability within the academy. Contributors include established and emerging scholars in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, the UK and the USA. Conceived as scholarly activism, Women, “Failure” and Academia Post-2020 aims to interrogate the future of universities and challenge perceptions of failure, especially with regard to women and women-identifying academics.