Congratulations to PhD student Natalie Adamyk on a new publication in the Canadian Review of Sociology. The article, “‘I feel like I'm changing people's lives, even if it's just two hours at a time’: Understanding contingent instructors’ emotion management in university teaching”, examines how contingent instructors use emotion management to affirm their professional identities while occupying a subordinated position within the university. Drawing on 40 interviews with female instructors across Canada, the article argues that these instructors, who may be faced with agency-curtailing experiences through institutional attitudes and sexist, racist, or otherwise patronizing behaviour from students, draw on confidence gained in previous employment, education, upbringing, and culture to reaffirm their identities as university instructors. Adamyk theorizes this process by drawing simultaneously on theories of emotion management and emotional capital. Find the article open access in the Canadian Review of Sociology.
Natalie Adamyk is a 6th year PhD student whose research focuses emotional labour within precarious employment, specifically contingent academia, the ways in which academics engage in these types of emotional work, and how these processes shape the ways in which they view their professional identities.