How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Academia: transformative praxis and climate action

Abstract

Well-being in academia is obviously tied to levels of burnout experienced by academics. Why are these levels increasing and how is their increase related to the marketization and neoliberalisation of universities? What should we, as academics, do in order to counter this trend and improve both our well-being and that of our students as well as society? These questions are addressed through experimental writing, employing techniques that are unusual for linguistics, namely autoethnography, in order to reflect on academic careers and the problems of mental health and harassment experienced by PhD students. Drawing inspiration from “transformative praxis”, this paper describes the approach of social justice teaching and conscientization. Focusing in particular on the theme of environmental education, the paper reflects on how introducing social justice teaching in academic courses is likely to prove helpful to prevent burnout and dissatisfaction. The second part of the paper describes the author’s experience with university courses about ecolinguistics and the feedback received from students, including a selection of their comments.

Keywords

• conscientization
• social justice
• academic burnout
• environmental education
• ecolinguistics
• cycling advocacy
• mental health
• climate crisis
• marketisation