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This paper is based on the personal connections of the four authors to Shivaji Park, the largest public space in Mumbai. Three of the authors are childhood friends and were once long-term residents of that area. The focus of this article is Shivaji Park, anecdotally the largest park in the island city of Mumbai, with its historical connotations and its ongoing role as a relational and cultural artefact in the lives of these authors. The ongoing member status of all four authors in connection with the public space is explored despite all of them now ceasing to be locals.

This article uses a qualitative approach utilising informal conversations between the four authors recorded on zoom as the research method. Supported by belonging and emotional reflexivity as conceptual frames, it investigates how the spatial context fosters a binding relationality, which is ongoing despite the now disparate locations of the authors.

Based on a critical analysis of the recorded conversations between the authors the findings highlight that belonging/unbelonging centres around emotionally tinged representations of place.

The core of this paper rests in the emotional connections between the authors based on their collective memories with a public space and its surrounding areas as a focus. The use of informal conversations is crucial in teasing out nuanced aspects of data collected based on human relationalities. The paper emphasises the repercussions of ongoing changes stemming from urban progress. They incur emotional and human costs through a “culling” of connections and belongings.

Identity, positioning and possibilities intersect differently for South Asian women in white academia. Within a broader migrant community that defines Australian life, these identities and positioning imply great possibility, but pursuing such pathways within academia is a walk on the last strand of resilience. This paper explores this tension of possibilities and constraints, using hope theory to highlight the cognitive resistance evident in the narratives of three South Asian women in Australian academia.

The authors use collaborative autoethnography to share their narratives of working in Australian universities at three different stages of careers, utilising Snyder's model of hope theory to interrogate their own goal-setting behaviours, pathways and agentic thinking.

The authors propose that hope as a cognitive state informs resistance and enables aspirations to contribute within academia in meaningful ways whilst navigating the terrain of inequitable structures.

The authors' use of hope theory as a lens on the intersectional experiences of career making, building and progression is a new contribution to scholarship on marginalised women in white academe and the ways in which the pathways of resistance are identified.

This paper emerged from the challenges encountered by both authors as academics during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Based on their subsequent reflections on inclusion in education for minoritised academics in pandemic-affected institutional contexts, they argue that beyond student-centred foci for inclusion, equity in the field, is equally significant for diverse teachers. Working as tempered radicals, they contend that anything less is exclusionary.

Using a reciprocal interview method and drawing on Freirean ideals of dialogue and education as freedom from oppression, the authors offer dual perspectives from specific positionings as a non-tenured woman academic of colour and a tenured staff member with a disability.

In framing this work dialogically and through Freirean ideals of conscientização, the authors' collective discussions politicise personal experiences of marginalisation in the teaching and researching of inclusion in education for preservice teachers, or more pointedly, in demonstrating the responsibility of all to orientate towards context-dependent inclusive practices. They assert that to enable educators to develop inclusion-oriented practice, the contextual frameworks need to ensure that they question their own experiences of inclusion as potentially precarious to enable meaningful teaching practice.

It offers perspectives drawing on race, dis/ability and gender drawing on two voices. The bivocal perspective is in itself limitation. It is also located within a very Australian context. However, it does have the scope to be applied globally and there is opportunity to further develop the argument using more intersectional variables.

The paper clearly highlights that universities require a sharper understanding of diversity, and minoritised staff's quotidian negotiations of marginalisations. Concomitantly inclusion and valuing of the epistemologies of minoritised groups facilitate meaningful participation of these groups in higher education contexts.

This article calls for a more nuanced, empathetic and critical understanding of issues related to race and disability within Australian and global academe. This is much required given rapidly shifting demographics within Australian and other higher education contexts, as well as the global migration trajectories.

This is an original research submission which contributes to debates around race and disability in HE. It has the potential to provoke further conversations and incorporates both hope and realism while stressing collaboration within the academic ecosystem to build metaphorical spaces of inclusion for the minoritised.

This research is situated at a metropolitan university in Melbourne (Australia) where the authors work in initial teacher education programs within the same faculty. The purpose of this study is to raise awareness that collegial, collaborative and “co-caring” environments can foster an improved sense of belonging, acceptance and inclusion in the academy. They also argue that communities of practice may foster an improved sense of belonging that enhances empowerment and harmony among all staff in academia in pandemic times and beyond.

The authors draw on case study methodology as a qualitative approach to understand and illuminate the phenomena under study. Case study methodology provides an in-depth understanding of their trifocal voices, as it allows them to voice their stories through collaborative autoethnography. The authors use self-narratives to unpack their sense of belonging in academic spaces. Collaborative autoethnography (CAE) enabled them to work together as a team of women and as a community of researchers.

The findings foreground the responsibilities of casual staff while concomitantly articulating the challenges faced by both permanent and casual staff to create a “sense of belonging” in the academy. The authors found that social connection engenders a sense of belonging and inclusion within a space that is often beset by neoliberal ideologies of competitiveness and individual achievement. They articulate their stress, pressure and uncertainty as permanent and as casual academics working supportively to develop and maintain identity in very difficult circumstances. They share how they developed professional relationships which bring unforeseen benefits and personal friendship at a time of especially restrictive practices.

The paper includes three voices, a limitation in itself, thus generalisations cannot be made to other academics or institutions. Employing CAE offers the possibility of delving more deeply into the emotional complexities inherent within this method for further research. They recommend a sense of “co-caring” as a form of pastoral care in the “induction program” for all academics including casual staff. While this may not “strategically” fit in with many because of power imbalances, the journey of co-caring and sharing and building friendships within the academy has a limited presence in the literature and calls for further investigation.

The authors draw attention to the need for higher education institutes to recognise the role permanent staff play when working with casual academics.

The authors draw attention to the need to be inclusive and collaborative as a way to improve the divide and strengthen connections between permanent and casual academics at university worksites. This is imperative given the shifting demographics within Australia and its workforce. They also highlight issues of race in the academy.

This is an original work carried out by the authors. It raises concerns about a sense of belonging in the academy, job certainty and the place of people of colour as these issues may also be experienced by other full-time and casual academics.