The day-to-day experiences of early-career academics in the periphery

This paper examines the everyday experiences of early career academics (ECAs) in a peripheral higher education system. It focuses on the roles, actions, routines, time pressures and relationships that characterise the everyday work of ECAs, while attending to the dynamics of interplay between structure and agency. Using a qualitative methodology, the daily experiences of ECAs are presented on a past-present-future continuum in order to enable to track the changes that have occurred over time and at different career stages. The findings draw attention to the range of pressures that ECAs in peripheral system face in building a teaching and research profile. The paper calls for a deeper understanding of ECAs' experiences with teching and the impact of structural constraints on their research roles, particularly in peripheral systems where teaching occupies a more dominant role compared to research.