Grounded in liquidity: writing and identity in third space

ORCID

Abstract

This paper argues that writing for publication has the potential to support the creation,negotiation, and stabilising of the professional identities of third space (Whitchurch, 2013)practitioners in higher education. Caught in the impermanence and unpredictability of ‘liquidlife’ (Bauman, 2005), third space opens up unique opportunities in writing that afford itspractitioners a means of building and sustaining identity. Third space expands academicwriting beyond its normative constraints, creating a tension between the apparent permanenceand solidity of writing and the liquidity that allows for the negotiation of meaning andidentity. As such, writing, particularly for dissemination, provides third space practitionerswith a strategy for creating a ‘grounding narrative’ (Stengel, 2013, p.2) that helps to stabilisetheir own identity whilst also allowing the flexibility required by a ‘liquid’ and uncertainpresent. We explore this process of negotiation by examining the role of writing in identityformation from the perspective of a range of third space practitioners, in an internationaltriple-site qualitative research study involving learning developers, learning designers,academic developers, and writing specialists. Our findings reveal that writing, as an act ofnegotiation of identity in third space, has the potential to actuate the fluidity of the space so it can become a site of liberation and resistance that may transform the very act of scholarly writing. What our study shows is that writing offers third space practitioners an opportunity to establish a narrative thread that may stabilise their liquid roles in academia.

Publication Date

2024-08-07

Publication Title

London Review of Education

Issue

Special edition

ISSN

1474-8460

Embargo Period

9999-12-31

Keywords

third space, writing, professional identity, academic identity, liberatory, higher education, Publishing

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