Palgrave Handbook of Imposter Syndrome in Higher Education

Michelle Addison is Assistant Professor at Durham University, UK. Michelle's research is concerned with inequality and a long-term vision of social justice for those facing the greatest social disadvantages in society. Maddie Breeze is Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Strathclyde, UK. She researches inequalities in universities, including via imposter syndrome, widening participation, and queer/feminist approaches to higher education. Yvette Taylor is Professor at the University of Strathclyde, UK. She is a feminist sociologist and researches intersecting social and educational inequalities, including manifestations of gender, social class and sexuality.

“The Palgrave Handbook of Imposter Syndrome in Higher Education gives brilliant insight into how people experience feelings of inclusion and exclusion in higher education. … The conclusion is insightful, entertaining and helpful for anyone within higher education. … The Handbook nonetheless gives fascinating insight into the concept of imposter syndrome and the range of ways in which different groups in higher education experience it, alongside practical advice for academic researchers and students.” (Christopher Featherstone, LSE Review of Books, blogs.lse.ac.uk, May 11, 2023)

• Introduction: Situating Imposter Syndrome in Higher Education.- Part I: Academic Identities.- 1.1 Locating Academic Imposters.- Intersectional imposter syndrome: How imposterism affects marginalised group.- ‘I shouldn’t be here’: Academics’ experiences of embodied (un)belonging, gendered competitiveness, and inequalities in precarious English higher education.- Impostor Phenomenon: its prevalence among academics and the need for a diverse and inclusive working environment in British Higher Education.- A Stranger’s House.- Marginalising imposterism: An Australian case study proposing a diversity of tendencies that frame academic identities and archetypes.- The Canary in the Coalmine: The impact of Imposter Syndrome on students’ learning experience at University.- 1.2 Constructing and Contesting Imposter Subjectivities.- I have not always been who I am now. Using doctoral research to understand and overcome feelings of imposterism.- ‘Dual exclusion’ and Constructing a ‘Bridging’ Space: Chinese PhD Students in New Zealand.- Rise with your class, not out of your class: Auto-ethnographic reflections on imposter syndrome and class conflict in higher education.- Skin in the Game: Imposter Syndrome and the Insider Sex Work Researcher.- Zombies, Ghosts and Lucky Survivors: Class Identities and Imposterism in Higher Education.- Part II: Imposing Institutions.- 2.1 Imposters across the career course.- Sprinting in glass slippers: Fairy tales as resistance to imposter syndrome in academia.- Restorying imposter syndrome in the Early Career stage: reflections, recognitions and resistance.- Formalised Peer-Support for Early Career Researchers: potential for resistance and genuine exchanges.- Getting stuck, writing badly, and other curiousimpressions: Doctoral writing and imposter feelings.- Surviving and thriving: doing a doctorate as a way of healing Imposter Syndrome.- Feeling “stupid”: Considering the affective in women doctoral students' experiences of imposter 'syndrome'.- Teaching as imposter in higher education: a Foucauldian discourse analysis of Australian university website homepages.- The Sociologist’s Apprentice: An islander reflects on their academic training.- 2.2 Belonging in the neoliberal university.- ‘“Whose Shoes Are You In?” Negotiating Imposterism inside Academia and in Feminist Spaces’.- ‘Praise of the Margins: Re-thinking Minority Practices in the Academic Milieu’.- Working with/against imposter syndrome: Research educators’ reflections.- Embodied hauntings: A collaborative autoethnography exploring how continual academic reviews increase the experience and consequences of imposter syndromein the neoliberal university.- Performing impact in research: a dramaturgical reflection on knowledge brokers in academia.- Being a Scarecrow in Oz: Neoliberalism, Higher Education and the dynamics of ‘Imposterism’.- A young dean in a Tanzanian university: transgressing imposterism through dialogical autoethnography.- Part III: Putting imposter feelings to work.- 3.1 Imposter agency.- It’s NOT luck: mature-aged female students negotiating misogyny and the ‘imposter syndrome’ in higher education.- 1001 Small Victories: Deaf Academics and Impostor Syndrome.- UnBecoming of Academia: Reflexively resisting imposterism through poetic praxis as Black women in UK higher education institutions.- The Perfect Imposter Storm: From Knowing Something to Knowing Nothing.- 3.2 Ambivalence and academic activism.- Shaking off the Imposter Syndrome: Our place in the resistance.- Putting the imp into imposter syndrome.- The Flawed Fairytale: A feminist narrative account of the challenges and opportunities that result from the imposter syndrome.- Becoming and Unbecoming an Academic: A Performative Autoethnography of Struggles Against Imposter Syndrome and Masculinist Culture from Early to Mid-Career in the Neoliberal University.- Haunting Imposterism.- Imposter Agony Aunts: Ambivalent Feminist Advice.