Women, "Failure" and Academia: Activism, Creativity and Critique in the Contemporary University
By (Author) Marina Cano
Edited by Rosa Garca-Periago
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Academic
19th March 2026
United Kingdom
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Gender studies: women and girls
Hardback
304
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
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.
Marina Cano is an independent researcher and former Associate Professor of English at Volda University College, Norway. In 2022, she was selected as one of the Scottish-European Crucible scholars. (See https://scottishcrucible.org.uk/dr-marina-cano/).
Rosa Garca-Periago is Senior Lecturer at the University of Murcia, Spain.