Academic mothers,professional identity and COVID-19: Feminist reflections on career cycles,progression and practice

Based on a collection of auto-ethnographic narratives that reflect our experiences as academic mothers at an Australian university, this paper seeks to illustrate the impact of COVID-19 on our career cycles in order to explore alternative feminist models of progression and practice in Higher Education. Collectively, we span multiple disciplines, parenting profiles, and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Our narratives (initiated in 2019) explicate four focal points in our careers as a foundation for analyzing self-definitions of professional identity: pre- and post-maternity career break; and pre- and post-COVID-19 career. We have modeled this research on a collective feminist research practice that is generative and empowering in terms of self-reflective models of collaborative research. Considering this practice and these narratives, we argue for a de-centering of masculinized career cycle patterns and progression pathways both now and beyond COVID-19. This represents both a challenge to neo-liberal norms of academic productivity, as well as a call to radically enhance institutional gender equality policies and practice.     

Serials Spoken Here: Reports of Conferences,Institutes, and Seminars

This quarter's column spans nearly eight months in 2016 and comprises reports from three library conferences. The UKSG 39th Annual Conference and Exhibition took place in the Bournemouth International Center (BIC), April 11 to April 13. The Potomac Technical Processing Librarians 92nd Annual Meeting convened October 21 at the University of Richmond. The Charleston Conference took place in Charleston, SC, October 31 to November 5.     

Alternatives to Custody in the New Zealand Criminal Justice System: Current Features and Future Prospects

Alternatives to custody in New Zealand have followed a format similar to criminal justice systems in the UK and other European countries but with a stronger emphasis on both punitive, work-based options like periodic detention, and more recently home detention, as well as restorative justice models. Much of current practice relies heavily on the now dated Criminal Justice Act 1985. However, a new sentencing and parole act is proposed for 2002. In this paper the authors review the current alternatives to custody in New Zealand, paying particular attention to issues arising from their recent research on home detention—surveillance, control and impacts on family members—and offering a reflection on the future prospects for alternatives to custody.     

The management of professional roles during boundary work in child welfare

Hall C, Slembrouck S, Haigh E, Lee A. The management of professional roles during boundary work in child welfare Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 348–357 © 2010 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and International Journal of Social Welfare. This article examines the ways in which child welfare professionals negotiate their roles and those of other professionals in home visits with clients, in this case the parents of young children. The concept of boundary work is developed within the context of the professional–client encounter. Drawing on Goffman's concept of ‘footing’, the analysis examines how professionals attend to ways of constructing family problems in terms of appropriate professional interventions – both from themselves and others. It is argued that the careful consideration of how problems merit interventions displays an adherence to the development of the supportive relations which move beyond strict professional remits. The article adds to the research evidence, which sees inter‐professional coordination as a complex matter, located in everyday practice rather than as advocating more tightly monitored procedure.