Between disconcertment and joy: using emotions to navigate academia as PhD researchers

Molyneux, Leah and Moore, A and Maclachlan, L (2026) Between disconcertment and joy: using emotions to navigate academia as PhD researchers. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. pp. 1-10. ISSN 0159-6306

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Abstract

Higher Education in the UK is facing sector-wide cuts, redundancies and uncertainty. It is a fearful landscape to enter as PhD researchers. As we contend with the instability of a sector which we hoped to make our career home, we reflect on the challenges and emotions that arose during our doctoral training. This timely article draws upon the PhD experience of three women working within Sociology in the UK, utilising ‘gut feelings’ to explore the conditions and processes that constitute the neoliberal academy. Specifically, we focus on the emotions of disconcertment and joy to examine our ‘emotional voices’ as PhD researchers (Askins & Blazek, Citation2017, p. 1093). On the surface, these emotions seem to reflect an affective binary of our experiences. We–the three authors of this article–argue that through embracing and being attuned to disconcertment, we were free to engage in joy as active resistance within the neoliberal academy. In writing this article about our collective affective experiences we hope to encourage other PhD researchers and members of Higher Education to take emotions seriously as a resource for navigating and understanding neoliberal life.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	© 2026 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords:	PhD research; neoliberalism; emotions; academia
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Business, Law and Criminology > School of Law and Criminology
SWORD Depositor:	RISE Symplectic
Depositing User:	RISE Symplectic
Date Deposited:	15 Jun 2026 10:44
Last Modified:	15 Jun 2026 10:44
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4935

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