Disabled and academic: a collaborative autoethnography on ableism and cruel optimism within Australian higher education

Universities are celebrated as bastions of teaching, knowledge and research excellence, but they can pose risks to staff psychosocial safety and wellbeing. In Australia and elsewhere, we are increasingly told that universities ‘are in crisis’. But what does this crisis look like, particularly for those already sitting on its margins? In this collaborative autoethnography, we explore the experiences of those working in academia as lecturers and researchers, as drawn from the disabled academics on the author team. Originally drawn to the ‘promise’ of academia, our stories catalogue the individual and collective experiences and conditions of ableism and cruel optimism that render our disabled bodyminds as ‘misfits’ within higher education. Tired of silence and frustration, we share some of our experiences in a collective effort to unsettle the existing conditions that regulate the toxicities of academia for everyone. We intend this article as a provocation: to provoke attention, collectivisation and response.