News

On 15 May 2025, Professor Emily F. Henderson delivered her inaugural professorial lecture, Achingly Academic: Critiquing, Demystifying and Hopefully Transforming the Academic Profession, at the University of Warwick.

Drawing on over a decade of scholarly work, the lecture invited a critical inward gaze at the academic profession. Emily argued that reflexive engagement with academic structures, practices and imaginaries is a vital part of enacting higher education’s public good mission. Rather than setting aside our analytical capacities for research alone, academics, she suggested, must bring these tools to bear on the very profession we inhabit.

The talk traced threads across Professor Henderson’s career, including research on international academic mobility, conferences, doctoral admissions, outreach, research centres, and care in academia – all shaped by a feminist poststructuralist approach to knowledge. Alongside these studies, the lecture also reflected on the personal and political labour of crafting an academic identity that is, in her words, “achingly academic.”

The event was warmly attended by colleagues, students, and members of the wider academic community and marked a significant moment for the Doctoral Education and Academia Research Centre (DEAR), which Professor Henderson co-founded and directs.

Watch the recording here - https://youtu.be/sDN1npBRA14?si=Kdk2NdGY8CyPn5XJLink opens in a new window

Full event details: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ces/desresearch/dear/profhendersoninaugurallecture/Link opens in a new window