‘Playing the same game differently’: constituting academic identities in four disciplines

Abstract Whilst many studies have explored academic identity construction, very few take a comparative perspective to examine the various ways of constructing academic identities within and across different disciplines. This paper analyses a key policy document used for evaluating academics’ performance along with semi-structured interviews with 37 academics from Chemical Sciences, Medical Sciences, Nursing and Education working in a research-intensive New Zealand university. The use of Foucault’s theoretical construct of games of truth provides a novel perspective to investigate the ways in which academics in different disciplines play the academic ‘game’ and how this might affect their construction of an academic identity. Our analysis suggests that the path into academia is a key factor in their trajectory of academic formation. The study suggests three types of ‘valid’ academics. It problematises the standardised definition and evaluation of academics and offers contextualised, multiple, dynamic and agential understandings of being and becoming set up through the interplay of forces arising from disciplinary, institutional, professional and personal spheres.