Academic Networking in Transition: Mapping Trajectories of Mobility and Precarity

Journal article, 2026

This study investigates how academics in precarious transition develop and adapt academic networks to support writing for publication amid institutional instability and geographic mobility. Drawing on longitudinal data from three displaced scholars, including interviews, feedback interactions, and repeated Academic Network Plots, we analyze changes in network size, structure, and function. Across cases, network development is explained by three integrated moves: (1) targeted initiation with selective pruning: purposeful outreach aligned with publishing aims while de-prioritizing less productive ties; (2) value brokering with role repositioning through reciprocal collaborations; and (3) durability orientation via structuring follow-ups and outputs (co-authorships, revision cycles, grants) to stabilize ties despite mobility. These moves function as counterstrategies to the epistemic marginalization described in centre-periphery research, showing how scholars under precarious conditions reshape their trajectories despite structural hierarchies. We extend research on academic networking by showing how precarity shapes both access to networks and scholars' positions within them. We offer a transition-sensitive framework that integrates structural and functional change with temporality, brokerage, and mobility. Implications are outlined for mentoring design, institutional support, and equitable participation in global knowledge production.