Emotional (dis/un)entanglement in becoming an academic in the neoliberal era: Dialogising transnational accounts of being, thinking and feeling

This paper explores the complex emotions and affective challenges that academics might experience in their journey of becoming within neoliberal higher education contexts transnationally. These are examined in entanglement with intricate social, ideological, political and racial factors across different stages of academic careers. Informed by a theoretical and conceptual framework in relation to affect and agency in plurilingual contexts and through a dialogic methodology, diverse accounts of four transnational academics in language education are presented in a series of embodied or online, synchronous or asynchronous dialogic events to explore and embrace the complex and entangled emotions. Instead of offering an instrumental solution for these complex challenging feelings, the authors attempted to untangle these emotional events of being, thinking and feeling across diverse scenarios and put forth an affective and agentive approach for a richer and more sustainable process of becoming in the neoliberal era. Copyright © 2025 The Author(s).