IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/uhejxx/v92y2021i4p623-647.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Notions of Human Capital and Academic Identity in the PhD: Narratives of the Disempowered

Author

Listed:
  • Lynette Pretorius
  • Luke Macaulay

Abstract

An important component of PhD students’ educational experiences is the understanding they develop of their academic identity. In this study, we explore PhD students’ expectations and lived realities during their studies through the lens of Bourdieu’s theory of practice. We show that doctoral students perceive the PhD as an all-consuming endeavor and, at the same time, a degree of competing demands. Importantly, several doctoral students’ academic identities were laden with conceptions of marginalization, which evoked feelings of disempowerment and lead to a lack of agency. Therefore, this study advocates for a doctoral environment where different forms of human capital are valued and the voices of PhD students are respected within the academy. This will ensure that future scholars are able to enter the academy with a strong sense of who they are and where they fit within their field.

Suggested Citation

  • Lynette Pretorius & Luke Macaulay, 2021. "Notions of Human Capital and Academic Identity in the PhD: Narratives of the Disempowered," The Journal of Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 92(4), pages 623-647, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:uhejxx:v:92:y:2021:i:4:p:623-647
    DOI: 10.1080/00221546.2020.1854605
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00221546.2020.1854605
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00221546.2020.1854605?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:hal:journl:hal-04678949 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:uhejxx:v:92:y:2021:i:4:p:623-647. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/uhej .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.