Love, Loss, and Rebirth: A Duoethnography of Career Transition in Neoliberal Academia

ABSTRACT Neoliberal tenets of career including a focus on the individual, self‐sufficiency, a disembodied worker, and linear career path are suffused throughout academia. However, extant research demonstrates how this neoliberal stronghold might rest upon contested terrain, particularly as post‐pandemic workers are re‐evaluating life goals and aspirations. This study contributes to the literature on academic career transitions in a neoliberal context by exploring how shifting life situations prompted by love and loss impact meanings of career. We combine the tenets of feminist invitational rhetoric with duoethnography to analyze our personal stories of career change. We develop an alternative feminist relational career transition framework that delineates witnessing, awakening, celebrating, and sustaining as invitational processes to resist neoliberal logics and facilitate rebirth.