the wandering: imagining beyond academia

This is a six-week space for women academics who feel uncomfortably placed within academia and want to think about ways of navigating it differently, or navigating out of it. Our focus will be on our somatic experiences of academia and our feelings within it and about it. We'll be working with story, breath, making practices & community.

The content:

The kinds of things we will be covering include:

- making and working with stories about academia

- working and making with stuckness, grief and anger

- deinstitutionalising and its possibilities

- belonging and unbelonging

- joy-finding and creativity

- embodied and energetic practices for the uncomfortable academic

- wanting to stay in academia but you’re not sure how

- wanting to leave academia but you’re not sure how

And other things – my intention is that groups be partly tailored to the needs, experiences, and feelings of the women in them. Groups will have around 6 women in them, and we’ll be meeting for 2 hours per week.

There won’t be homework!

Please note that these sessions do not function as careers advice. However, you will be provided with a list of resources that can help you with these things if you are leaving or thinking of leaving academia.

The details:

Sessions will start on Wednesday 4th May at 7pm-9pm [GMT] on Zoom and will be recorded so that you can watch or re-watch them after the fact. If there’s enough demand for the sessions, I will also open up a second group in a different slot [slot tbc]. If you can’t make the slots but you’d like to be informed about the possibility of a second group, please let me know.

Fees are £66 for low waged/student and £100 for privileged/waged. 

If you’d like to join but the fee is prohibitive, pleases get in touch and we can discuss options. I am capping the group at around 6 women so, if you’d like to join, please do so asap to avoid missing out.

Who I am:

I am an academic, researcher, writer, editor, tarot-reader, storyworker and teacher. I worked in various institutions until 2019 when, exhausted, disillusioned, furious and creatively depleted [and newly pregnant!], I decided to leave my permanent academic post. Since then, I’ve been figuring out how to navigate a world and life beyond academia, whilst also being attached, still, to many of its objects and promises. Teaching and writing remain an integral part of my practice and, these days, you can find me in, and seeking out, de-hierarchised, anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, collaborative, queer, de-institutionalised settings and scenes. ‘The wandering’ is my contribution to making and facilitating one such scene.