Study by Welsh university examines how joy is found in academia

A new study by researchers and students at Welsh and Swedish universities explores how joy is found in academic life against the backdrop of challenges in the higher education sector.

Conducted by Bangor University and Umeå University, and published by Education in the North, the research considers experiences of joy in higher education across five points of academic life:  student, doctoral researcher, the early career lecturer, the established senior lecturer and the professor.

Individuals taking part in the study examines joy in higher education through the lens of their personal lived experiences.

Dialogue

Presented as a dialogue, the paper brings together five voices across two countries and different cultures to tease apart what it means to experience joy in higher education settings.

Dr Alex Baxendale, a lecturer at Bangor University’s School of Psychology and Sport Science, said: “Perhaps unexpectedly little research has investigated the emotion of joy. In fact, it is the least researched of the positive emotions.

“While there are many reports of joy being eroded from higher education, and there are also reports of moments of joy in higher education that keep students and academics firmly engaged in study and work.”

Kirk P H Sullivan, Professor of Linguistics at Umeå University, and Honorary Professor of Education at Bangor University said: “The dialogue unfolds as an open exchange, as each perspective deepens and broadens the individual and collective understandings of joy in higher education.”

‘Rethinking of joy’

Professor Sullivan continued: “The reflections offered by the participants in the study invite a rethinking of joy in education—not as a private, fleeting feeling, but as a complex, socially embedded practice.

“The view of joy as internal and individual is challenged. Instead, it emerges as a social phenomenon—produced in dialogue and sustained through intellectual and collective effort, which is cultivated over time. Joy becomes less about what someone feels and more about what they create with others.

“The tension between joy as an individual and joy as a social experience is not a binary to be resolved, but a creative space of inquiry.”

In their conclusion the authors of the study invite the reader to view joy in education not as an endpoint but as a practice instead. They explain it as a form of care, a mode of relation, and a method of meaning-making that sustains educational life in all of its complexity.