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Academic labour process in the context of neo-liberal Higher Education (HE) management system, specifically the university system, had in recent years evoked multiple and conflicting dimensions for lived-work experiences of academics in the university. Between multiple levels of mundane/routine teaching and learning, and at the extreme of the continuum, i.e. research for knowledge production, and community engagements, occasioned by the dictates of neo-liberal logics, the lived-work experiences and self-identity of academics are constructed. This co-construction illustrates how the work of academics is further embedded in global neo-liberal dynamics, and how this reconstructs the “normalcy” of academic work process, and “self- identity” of academics. Change in normalcy such as the reforms in universities management system, globally , and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, for example, has also deepened challenges facing HE management in terms of funding, governance, and “social mission”. This has further compelled universities to initiate alternatives in managerial practices. This is even more demonstrated along the “contours” of neo-liberal reforms of the universities system, globally. Utilizing the concept of “liminality” in organisational research, the paper demonstrates how the emerging dynamics in neo-liberal university system, including the impact of the pandemic shape the “identity-work”, “subjectitviy” and “agency” of academics, in context. While the paper draws on conceptual-analytics of liminality, it evaluates and examines the “discursive narratives” of academics, in context, during period of uncertainties, such as academic policy reforms, academic governance; illustrating the implications on their identity-work. The paper shows how liminal practices in the academia at a time of reform in the universities’ governance could aid the process of construction and co-construction of identity-work of academics. The on-going co-construction of identity-work in the context of neo-liberal academia has produced “liminal personae” in the university system, even at a time of uncertainty.

In response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic, the first primary and immediate response of countries all over the world, including Nigeria, has been to introduce series of protocol, including lockdown ( and its “relaxation”), and other public heath guidelines on the large section of the population and business activities, as attempts to reduce the spread of the pandemic. However, implicated in the lockdown protocols has also been “irreparable damage” on the people, and their socio-economic activities; unleashing twin problems of deprivation and anxiety, for people in Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA). The paper analyses and provides a critical understanding of current dimensions and implications of COVID-19 pandemic on the lives and livelihood of a particular category of Nigerian population refers to as vulnerable group. It evaluates the current policy response and intervention programs of public authority in Nigeria, in mitigating the impact of the crisis. Evidence continue to show that strict lockdown directives not only affect social life of the people, but more significantly, with dire consequences on their livelihood.

The concept of social process is further explicated in this paper as a route to further understand employment relations system; in its comparative perspectives and analysis. The paper argues that analysis of employment relations needs to focus on context i.e. specifics, and cross national patterns of cultural/social process trajectories, in the explanation of institutional structures and characteristics that influence the dynamics and functions of a variety of employment relations systems. Review of extant literature on employment relations system calls for a re-cast, and embedding of social process into employment relations analysis. Such nuanced perspective seeks to adequately explain national employment relations institutions and their outcomes in historicity and context. Integrating cultural/social process nuances into our understanding, significantly explains all the dimensions embedded in a national employment relations system.