The hidden emotional labour of the hourly-paid lecturer

For many hourly-paid lecturers, an academic career involves far more than developing expertise in teaching. You will have to navigate uncertainty, construct a professional identity and find a sense of belonging within institutions, even when permanence can feel out of reach. 

Looking back now, having secured permanent academic roles, we reflect on the hidden emotional labour inherent in early academic careers and how these experiences continue to shape our understanding of higher education.

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For years, our academic careers were built around uncertainty. We refreshed inboxes waiting for teaching allocations, moved between temporary contracts with changing titles, taught in unfamiliar disciplines and said yes to opportunities long before we knew whether they would lead to more work the following semester. 

Like many hourly-paid lecturers in higher education, we learned to appear confident and committed on the surface, while navigating professional invisibility and the persistent feeling of existing on the margins of institutional life. From our current academic and leadership roles, we can now see that the road to becoming a lecturer involved far more than simply learning how to teach. It required a lot of invisible work: we had to constantly adapt, project confidence under uncertain conditions and construct academic identities within a higher education system that rarely acknowledged how precarious that journey could feel.

For us, this was about legitimacy. We were doing the work of lecturers before we were fully recognised as lecturers within institutional life. Feeling precarious can shape how confidently people speak in academic spaces, how far they feel entitled to contribute and whether they can imagine a future for themselves in higher education.

Existing on the margins

One of the most difficult aspects of working as an hourly-paid lecturer was the pressure to continually appear indispensable or collegial. We became accustomed to overpreparing, overcommitting and remaining adaptable in order to secure future opportunities. 

Departments seemed to have an unofficial hierarchy based on who was on a temporary contract and who wasn’t: those with permanence, visibility, institutional recognition and clear progression pathways, and those existing on the edges, moving between shared workspaces, short-term teaching allocations and uncertain futures. Our contract titles changed regularly, but our uncertainty remained the same.

We watched permanent colleagues gain access to opportunities largely unavailable to hourly-paid staff: research time, funded development opportunities, office space and clearer pathways for progression. The professional learning expected of us happened when we made it happen; through resilience, self-funding, observation, self-doubt and reinvention. Looking back, it is striking how much invisible work we did in simply trying to remain visible.

Performing permanence

Over time, we became skilled at performing permanence long before we experienced it ourselves. Like many hourly-paid lecturers, we volunteered for additional responsibilities, adapted quickly to institutional change and stayed committed even while our employment remained uncertain. The contradiction was difficult to ignore: we were trusted to support students, contribute to modules and uphold academic standards, yet we often existed outside many of the structures associated with belonging within the university itself.

Constantly moving between contracts, line managers and institutional expectations created instability that was not always visible from the outside. We learned to reshape ourselves around departmental priorities and changing pedagogical demands. Of course, we had to be resilient and malleable, but so too did we need to learn emotional self-protection. It’s exhausting continually trying to prove your worth in a place that won’t recognise it fully.

When precarity becomes personal

The emotional weight of precarious employment became particularly apparent when professional uncertainty intersected with significant personal milestones. For Katie, this came shortly before returning from maternity leave, when a permanent lecturing position was advertised. Having taught at the institution for six years, she saw it as an opportunity for stability, professional recognition and a greater sense of belonging. Despite a positive interview, she was unsuccessful.

The disappointment extended beyond the unsuccessful application. Over the years, Katie had invested considerably in the institution, often teaching more hours than permanent colleagues and contributing to curriculum development and departmental initiatives. Changes in management had already seen hourly-paid lecturers excluded from activities they had previously been encouraged to undertake. 

The rejection reinforced a growing sense that experience, commitment and institutional loyalty offered little guarantee of professional progression. It marked a turning point. For the following four years, Katie restricted her university involvement to her contracted teaching hours and took a position as an academic manager at a language school. Although this offered an alternative career path, she questioned whether leaving higher education meant abandoning the specialist expertise in English for Academic Purposes she had spent years developing.

For Yaz, the uncertainty emerged through a different experience of maternity leave. After four years as an hourly-paid lecturer, she approached her employer to seek reassurance that her position would remain available when she returned. She also explored whether her role could be made permanent, offering greater employment security and access to maternity benefits. Neither assurance was forthcoming. 

Despite more than a decade of experience in teaching and student support, she faced the prospect of becoming a parent without knowing whether she would have a job to return to. What had previously been an accepted feature of hourly-paid employment suddenly carried much greater personal consequences. The absence of security at such a significant life stage brought into sharp focus the gap between her professional contribution and her position within the institution.

Although our experiences differed, both exposed the emotional costs of employment arrangements that offer limited security or recognition. Neither diminished our commitment to students, but both fundamentally altered our relationships with the institutions we served. Looking back, we recognise how prolonged precarity can gradually erode professional identity, belonging and the willingness to contribute beyond contractual obligations. Universities rely heavily on the expertise and goodwill of hourly-paid lecturers, yet risk undermining that commitment when employment practices fail to reflect the value of their contributions.

Looking back differently

Having now moved into more secure academic and leadership positions, we can both recognise that these experiences have fundamentally shaped our understanding of professionalism, collegiality and support within higher education. Years of navigating uncertainty made us acutely aware of how easily hourly-paid staff can become invisible, despite making substantial contributions to teaching, student support and academic life. 

Working on the margins fostered resilience and adaptability, but it also cultivated empathy: for colleagues balancing multiple institutions, for those questioning their place within academia and for academics who continue to perform stability while living with professional insecurity.

These experiences continue to influence how we approach leadership, mentoring and staff development, especially since we know that belonging within higher education isn’t something you assume through employment. Academics’ feeling valued often emerges through inclusion, trust and opportunities for meaningful contribution. The sector is rapidly restructuring, centring performance metrics and increasing workload pressure – so it’s easy to overlook the emotional realities of being a part-time lecturer.

Perhaps this is one of the contradictions at the centre of higher education: universities depend heavily upon the emotional commitment, adaptability and relational labour of precariously employed academics, while often failing to acknowledge the personal cost of sustaining that commitment over time. The hidden pressures involved in becoming a lecturer did not simply shape our careers. They shaped how we understand belonging, leadership and what it truly means to support others within higher education.

Katherine Mansfield and Yaz Osho work in the Centre for Education and Teaching Innovation at the University of Westminster, where they support inclusive teaching and academic development across the institution.

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