Article
Marianne Engelbrecht¹*, Lessing Labuschagne²
¹ Researcher Development Academy, Department of Research, Innovation and Commercialisation, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
² Department of Research, Innovation and Commercialisation, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
Abstract
University strategies increasingly position researcher development as central to research excellence, yet researchers’ lived experiences remain underexplored. This paper examines researcher development as a lived, layered, and future-shaping phenomenon, moving beyond policy and performance framings. Using Causal Layered Analysis (CLA), the study focuses on the myth and metaphor layer to surface narratives shaping identity, agency, and imagined futures. Drawing on qualitative interviews across career stages at a large African open distance learning institution, metaphors were analysed through narrative foresight, emplotted as a monomythic archplot, and interpreted using the Futures Triangle. Findings show uneven narrative positioning, where constrictive narratives of survival, overload, and compliance dominate earlier stages, while enabling narratives of growth and possibility are largely confined to established researchers. This uneven positioning constrains access to future-oriented agency and reveals disconnections between institutional aspirations and lived experience.
Keywords
Causal Layered Analysis; narrative foresight; myth and metaphor; researcher development; Global South higher education
Introduction
The last decade has seen growing attention to researcher development within academic practice as higher education systems navigate accelerating technological change, institutional reform, and heightened uncertainty. Digital transformation has become a defining condition of contemporary higher education, reshaping how research is conducted, supported, and evaluated (Castro Benavides et al., 2020). Yet this transformation is predominantly framed in technological and managerial terms (Castañeda & Selwyn, 2018), and universities are increasingly required to balance innovation, research productivity, impact, and responsiveness, even as the lived realities of researchers remain insufficiently understood. Researcher development has emerged not only as a strategic priority but as a contested space shaped by competing expectations, imaginaries of success, and implicit assumptions about what it means to be a researcher in a technology-enabled academic environment. Unbundling researcher development, therefore, requires mapping not only institutional structures and policies, but also the inner dimensions of the institution and the lived experiences of its researchers. Such an approach enables deeper insight into how research support systems are experienced, interpreted, and enacted, and how these experiences shape possible and preferred futures of academic work.
Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) was employed as a futures sensemaking framework to explore researcher development at an open-distance learning institution in South Africa. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data, the broader inquiry sought a holistic understanding of researchers’ experiences across career stages and to inform the creation of a more inclusive and enabling research ecosystem.
This paper focuses specifically on the fourth layer of the CLA inquiry – myth and metaphor – to surface deeper narratives shaping what it means to “be a researcher.” Using narrative foresight, emerging worldviews were analysed through a monomythic archplot structure, with emplotment used to reveal enabling and constrictive dynamics affecting researcher identity, career progression, and support expectations. In doing so, the paper demonstrates how myth-informed foresight can enrich understandings of researcher development and support more reflexive, future-oriented institutional strategies.
By foregrounding myth and metaphor through narrative foresight and monomythic emplotment, this paper extends the application of Causal Layered Analysis in higher education by demonstrating how deep narrative structures shape researcher development futures and the possibilities for more enabling research ecosystems.
Researcher Development as a Lived and Layered Phenomenon
Researcher development is widely recognised as a multifaceted and contested concept, with academic literature offering diverse, sometimes competing interpretations that foreground skills, capacity, identity, and lived experience across different institutional and career contexts (Evans, 2011a). For example, Coleridge et al. (2004) define researcher development within a framework of capacity-building policies and practices, while Adams (2004) views it as the acquisition and development of specific skills and knowledge.
Evans (2012) recommends using a broad definition of the concept, whereby it refers to people’s capacity and willingness to carry out the research components of their work or studies, with a degree of permanence that exceeds transitoriness, and proposes the deconstruction of researcher development into three main components, namely behavioural development, attitudinal development and intellectual development. In addition, there has been growing interest in investigating how academics experience research and being a researcher (Bruce et al., 2004). In a review conducted by Åkerlind (2008), about academics’ perspectives on being a researcher, it was determined that academics do not necessarily agree on what it means to be a university researcher, to conduct research, or what it means to be successful in research.
In the context where the majority of universities maintain dedicated research support departments, along with an extensive array of research support policies and initiatives, diligently overseen by administrators and proficient support personnel, one would expect that, in general, research productivity will have increased incrementally over the years; automatically producing a significant cohort of internationally recognised and rated researchers, who can produce impactful research in top tier journals. Yet, this is not always the case. One of the key explanations for this occurrence might be that the importance of acknowledging and incorporating attitudinal development, as part of researcher development and research support, is generally overlooked (Evans, 2011b).
Behavioural change is most effective when it is underpinned by attitudinal and intellectual change that moves beyond mere compliance, to increase research productivity and output, and includes an unadulterated commitment to change and development. This implies that the effectiveness of capacity development initiatives that are aimed at increasing research productivity and output and raising the quality of output by enhancing people’s research skills (both of which are behavioural components of researcher development) are, in fact, dependent upon the extent to which values are modified, perceptions are shifted, knowledge bases and structures are re-aligned, and understanding is deepened (Evans, 2012).
Taken together, these perspectives suggest that researcher development extends beyond a technical or managerial concern to encompass a layered phenomenon shaped by identities, values, and underlying assumptions and dimensions that are often less visible in policy and performance-driven approaches yet remain important for understanding how researcher development is experienced and how its futures are imagined.
Causal Layered Analysis as Futures Sensemaking
The Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) integrates empiricist, interpretive, critical, and action learning modes of inquiry to explore how issues are understood, experienced, and acted upon over time (Inayatullah, 2017). Rather than privileging prediction or surface trends alone, CLA attends to how meanings, assumptions, and narratives shape both present conditions and images of the future. It enables movement between different layers of analysis, allowing multiple ways of knowing to be held in productive tension (Slaughter, 2001).
CLA operates across four interrelated layers: the litany, which captures dominant descriptions, data, and commonly accepted framings; systemic causes, which examine structural drivers, institutional arrangements, and patterns; worldview or cultural assumptions, which surface shared beliefs and discourses; and myth and metaphor, which engage the deepest symbolic and narrative dimensions through which meaning is constituted (Inayatullah, 2015; Ramos, 2015). Movement across these layers enables connections between observable practices and underlying logics, values, and imaginaries.
In this study, CLA was employed as a futures sensemaking framework to explore researcher development within a technology-enabled open distance learning institution in South Africa. The purpose of the inquiry was not only to examine existing policies and support structures, but to map the inner dimensions of the institution and the lived experiences of its researchers. By moving up and down through the layers of analysis, CLA enabled the articulation of alternative understandings of researcher development that extend beyond managerial or performance-driven accounts.
While the broader inquiry drew on both quantitative and qualitative data to engage different layers of analysis, this paper focuses specifically on the fourth layer of CLA, namely that of myth and metaphor. This layer was selected to surface the deeper narratives shaping what it means to “be a researcher,” and to reveal how identities, assumptions, and symbolic framings enable or constrain researcher development and career progression. Through this focus, CLA provides the foundation for a narrative foresight approach that foregrounds meaning-making and anticipatory imagination as central to understanding researcher development futures.
Narrative Foresight, Myth, and Metaphor
Narrative foresight attends to the stories individuals and institutions tell about themselves, their environments, and their futures, recognising these narratives as central to how meaning is constructed, and action is oriented over time (Milojević & Inayatullah, 2015). From this perspective, futures are not only shaped by trends and structures, but by the deeper stories, assumptions, and imaginaries through which people make sense of change, uncertainty, and possibility. Narrative foresight, therefore, complements CLA by engaging directly with the myth and metaphor layer, where anticipatory meaning is most powerfully constituted.
Metaphors play a critical role in this process by bringing implicit knowledge and lived experience to the surface. They function as cognitive and cultural devices that connect abstraction and embodiment, enabling individuals to express complex experiences, emotions, and assumptions that may otherwise remain unarticulated (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Cornelissen, 2006). Within futures inquiry, metaphors are not treated as stylistic expressions, but as indicators of deeper worldviews that shape how present conditions are interpreted and how futures are imagined (Carbonell et al., 2016; Cowart, 2022; Heinonen & Minkkinen, 2016).
Myth operates at an even deeper symbolic level, drawing on archetypal narratives that give coherence to collective experience and provide implicit scripts for action (Honko, 1984; MacGill, 2015; Tang, 2024). In the context of CLA, myth and metaphor are closely intertwined, with metaphors acting as vehicles through which myths are enacted and reproduced in everyday discourse (Inayatullah & Milojević, 2015). These myths should not be understood as true or false, but as enabling or constraining, depending on how they align with desired futures.
Situating metaphors within a broader narrative structure allows for deeper insight into how stories evolve over time. Building on Cowart’s (2022) work, this study employs a monomythic archplot structure as a sensemaking device to locate and interpret metaphorical narratives in relation to past, present, and anticipated futures. The monomyth, often referred to as the “hero’s journey,” provides a generic narrative scaffold through which experiences of disruption, resistance, transformation, and mastery can be examined without imposing a singular or linear trajectory. This archetypal story, famously detailed by mythologist Joseph Campbell in his foundational work The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Campbell, 1949/2008; Cowart, 2022), outlines a universal pattern of adventure, crisis, and transformation that resonates across cultures, and has been shown to enhance meaning-making at the individual level when people situate their own life narratives within its structure (Rogers et al., 2023).
The process of emplotment, understood as the act of organising experiences into a coherent narrative, was used to situate researchers’ metaphors along the archplot structure (Carr, 1986). This approach enables the identification of dominant problem narratives, emerging solution narratives, and areas of misalignment between lived experience and institutional aspirations. Rather than predicting outcomes, emplotment serves as a futures sensemaking practice that reveals how researchers position themselves within unfolding narratives of change.
In applying narrative foresight to researcher development, this study treats metaphors and myths as anticipatory signals that reflect both current constraints and emerging possibilities. By engaging these narrative structures, it becomes possible to surface alternative imaginaries of researcher development and to explore how more enabling and equitable futures might be imagined and enacted within the institutional context.
Research Design and Methodological Orientation
This study adopted a qualitative, interpretive research design informed by futures inquiry and guided by CLA. A phenomenographic orientation was employed to capture variation in how researcher development is experienced and understood across different career stages, rather than to establish a singular or normative account. This orientation is particularly suited to inquiries concerned with inner dimensions, meaning-making, and differing ways of experiencing the same institutional context (Marton & Säljö, 1976; Hajar, 2021).
The study was conducted at the largest open-distance learning university in Africa, a context characterised by scale, geographic dispersion, and increasing reliance on digital infrastructures for teaching and research. Stratified purposive sampling was used to recruit participants from across the institution, ensuring representation of emerging and developing researchers, as well as established researchers and research leaders. In total, 38 researchers from diverse disciplines, colleges, and roles participated in the study. In this context, the term “researcher” refers to both academics for whom research forms part of their contractual responsibilities and individuals employed in research-only roles.
Data were generated through semi-structured online interviews designed to elicit reflective and narrative accounts of participants’ research journeys and experiences of researcher development within the institution. Interviews focused on participants’ perceptions of research expectations, support structures, career progression, and identity as researchers over time.
As part of the interview process, participants were invited to articulate their experiences using metaphors that best captured their feelings, attitudes, and assumptions about what it means to be a professional researcher within the institutional context. Participants were also asked to reflect on and agree upon a provisional “title” for their research journey, which served as an entry point for exploring dominant narratives and underlying worldviews.
Data analysis was guided by the myth and metaphor layer of CLA, with particular attention to how narratives and symbolic language expressed deeper assumptions, identities, and meaning structures. Interview transcripts were reviewed iteratively to identify recurring metaphors and narrative patterns, which were then analysed using narrative foresight and futures-oriented sensemaking.
To further contextualise the narratives, the Futures Triangle (Inayatullah & Milojević, 2015) was applied as an analytical lens. Participants were invited to reflect on their research journeys in relation to:
- the weight of history, understood as past experiences, systemic constraints, and institutional structures that limit or shape researcher development;
- the push of the present, including current demands, pressures, trends, and opportunities influencing research practice; and
- the pull of the future, referring to aspirations, motivations, and preferred images of what researcher development could or should become.
These reflections supported the interpretation of narratives in relation to past, present, and anticipated futures, without positioning the Futures Triangle as a predictive tool.
Ethical clearance for the study was obtained in accordance with institutional research ethics requirements. Participation was voluntary, informed consent was obtained from all participants, and confidentiality and anonymity were maintained throughout the research process.
Trustworthiness was supported through careful documentation of the analytical process, iterative engagement with the data, and inclusion of participants across diverse roles and career stages. Reflexive awareness of the researchers’ positionality within the institutional context further informed interpretation.
Analytic Framework: Monomythic Archplot, Emplotment, and a Culturally Situated Hero’s Journey
To support the analysis of metaphorical narratives emerging from the data, this study draws on a monomythic archplot structure and the concept of emplotment as futures-oriented sensemaking devices. Rather than treating metaphors as isolated expressions, this approach situates them within broader narrative configurations that reflect how experiences are interpreted over time and how futures are implicitly anticipated.
Narratives, as expressed through metaphors, give insight into the unique and often private dimensions of inner experience. The analytical focus is therefore not on metaphors in themselves, but on the attitudes, assumptions, and ways of thinking they convey, and on the implications, these have for researcher development, capacity-building, and institutional sensemaking. Situating metaphors within a conceptual meta-narrative structure provides a means to locate dominant discourses while anticipating how these narratives may evolve as myths and worldviews shift.
Building on Cowart’s (2022) work, the monomythic archplot structure is understood as inhabiting the interpretive space between myth and metaphor. Drawing on ritualised archetypal narratives of challenge, transformation, and return, the archplot enables organising metaphors to emerge and cohere within a situated narrative configuration, a process that David Cowart refers to as emplotment. This provides a structured yet flexible framework for examining narrative movement without imposing a single linear or prescriptive storyline.
Emplotment, as described by Carr (1986), is an act of sensemaking through which events and experiences are organised into a meaningful narrative. When metaphors are located along the monomythic archplot, the resulting narratives can be grounded within a Beginning–Middle–End (BME) structure that reflects past conditions, present tensions, and anticipated futures. Such narrative structures have long played a central role in how individuals and collectives make sense of identity, purpose, and change, and have more recently been recognised as valuable tools for organisational sensemaking and strategic imagination (Spencer & Salvatico, 2015).
The monomyth is most commonly associated with Campbell’s (1949/2008) articulation of the “hero’s journey,” often characterised as a linear progression from departure, through initiation, to return. However, the universal applicability of the monomyth has been critiqued as reflecting a culturally situated and predominantly Western narrative framework that privileges individualised trajectories of transformation. Such formulations centre a singular protagonist and assume a coherent progression driven by individual agency, often marginalising more relational, collective, and contextually embedded forms of storytelling (Aston, 2024; Hanney, 2024).
In contrast, storytelling traditions within Southern African contexts often foreground relationality, collective identity, and continuity between the individual and the social environment. Narrative movement is less frequently represented as a singular, linear quest and more as a contextually embedded process shaped by disruption, adaptation, and negotiation. Transformation, in this framing, is not guaranteed, nor is it solely the product of individual effort, but contingent on relational dynamics, access to resources, and historically sedimented conditions.
In this study, the monomythic archplot is therefore not applied as a fixed or universal template, but is reinterpreted through a culturally situated lens informed by Southern African narrative traditions and the historical figure of Shaka Ilembe. Shaka Ilembe is widely recognised within Southern African narrative and historical imaginaries as a figure whose trajectory reflects rupture, adaptation, and leadership under conditions of uncertainty (Wylie, 2006).
Drawing on this contextual grounding, the “hero’s journey” as it emerges in this study is better understood as a relational and negotiated passage, rather than a linear progression toward mastery. Across the narratives analysed, movement is characterised by patterns of interruption, negotiation, and partial progression, where advancement is often uneven, reversible, and contingent. Researchers do not simply “answer the call” and progress toward transformation; rather, they navigate competing demands, institutional constraints, and shifting expectations that shape both the possibility and the pace of movement along the journey. This reinterpretation enables the monomythic archplot to function as a culturally sensitised sensemaking device, capable of capturing both the aspirational and constrained dimensions of researcher development.
In this study, the reference to Shaka Ilembe is not intended as a universal archetype, but as a culturally situated narrative scaffold that resonates with the institutional and geographical context of the research. Its use serves to sensitise the archplot analysis to alternative narrative logics, while remaining attentive to the plurality and diversity of storytelling traditions within African contexts. This provided a culturally resonant narrative backdrop through which metaphors could be interpreted with greater contextual sensitivity.
With this analytic framework in place, the following section presents the findings of the study by examining the dominant narrative worldviews and metaphors that emerged from researchers’ accounts and situating these within the monomythic archplot to illuminate patterns of constraint, transition, and possibility in researcher development.
Findings: Narrative Worldviews and Situated Metaphors
Analysis of the interview data revealed that researchers consistently made sense of their development journeys through metaphorical narratives that expressed shared patterns of experience, identity, and orientation towards the future. Figure 1 illustrates how participant accounts are interpreted through emplotment within the monomythic archplot. It traces the movement from constrictive narratives, expressed through metaphors of paralysis and survival, toward a solution-oriented narrative configuration associated with reactivated agency. The figure highlights the analytical shift from deconstruction of the problem myth to the articulation of a preferred future, supported by participant excerpts.
When situated within the monomythic archplot structure, these metaphors clustered into five distinct narrative worldviews, each reflecting a particular positioning within the researcher’s journey and corresponding assumptions about agency, constraint, and possibility.
Fig 1: Emplotting the “freeze or flight” narrative within the monomythic archplot
These narrative worldviews represent neither fixed categories nor linear stages, but dominant sensemaking configurations through which researcher development is experienced and imagined. Table 1 summarises the key narratives, associated problem metaphors, their situated positions along the archplot, and the alternative or solution metaphors that point towards emerging or preferred futures.
Table 1: Narrative Worldviews of Researcher Development and their Situated Metaphors
| Worldview | Problem metaphor / myth (deconstruction) | Archplot situated metaphor | Solution metaphor / myth (alternative future reconstruction) | Solution situated archplot (preferred future) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Why zebras don’t get ulcers | Freeze or flight | Refusal of the call | Ukuvuka (awakening / reactivation of agency) | Face and fight / Commit to change |
| Between a rock and a hard place | Surviving the odds | Ordinary world / disruption | Navigating challenges | Experiment with solutions / recognising opportunities |
| Overwhelmed and over it | Carrying a heavy load | Left of midpoint (stalled transition) | Finding calm in the chaos / refocus | Approaching mastery |
| The compliance game | Paper loyalty | Crossing first threshold | Orchestra as unity / Sheet music as strategy | Allies, tests and challenges |
| The call of the wild | Journey into the unknown | Right of midpoint (transformation) | Seizing opportunities / Embracing uncertainty | Journey to mastery / achievement |
“Why zebras don’t get ulcers”: Freeze or Flight
The metaphor “why zebras don’t get ulcers” draws on Sapolsky’s (2004) distinction between acute and chronic stress responses. In natural environments, animals such as zebras experience short, time-bound physiological stress in response to immediate threats, such as escaping predators. Once the threat has passed, the stress response subsides and equilibrium is restored. In contrast, humans are more likely to experience prolonged, anticipatory stress linked to complex social and institutional environments, where threats are diffuse, ongoing, and rarely resolved.
Participants’ narratives suggest that, unlike the zebra’s capacity to return to equilibrium after threat, researchers experience sustained and compounding pressures that do not resolve, but accumulate over time. These pressures include escalating performance expectations, administrative demands, and shifting institutional priorities. Rather than eliciting active resistance or adaptation, these conditions often give rise to states of paralysis, withdrawal, or disengagement, captured in this study through the reframing of the familiar “fight or flight” response as “freeze or flight.”
As one participant reflected:
“Sometimes it feels like you just shut down… you know what needs to be done, but you can’t move forward.” (ED_05)
When situated within the monomythic archplot, this narrative aligns with the refusal of the call, reflecting a reluctance or inability to embark on the transformative journey associated with sustained research engagement. Rather than progressing toward mastery, researchers positioned within this narrative remain oriented toward survival and risk avoidance. As a problem myth, this worldview constrains the imagination of alternative futures by normalising stasis as a coping strategy.
At the level of myth and metaphor, the zebra metaphor reveals a disjuncture between institutional imaginaries of resilience and the lived realities of researcher experience. While institutional narratives may implicitly assume that researchers can respond adaptively to pressure, participants’ accounts suggest that prolonged exposure to systemic demands produces a qualitatively different condition characterised by chronic stress, limited recovery, and constrained agency. In this sense, the metaphor serves as a critique of the assumption that pressure necessarily leads to productivity or growth.
Another participant described it as:
“There is always something more to do, more to respond to… and eventually you just stop, because you don’t know where to start anymore.” (ED_12)
At the same time, deconstructing this metaphor reveals the possibility of a solution myth centred on reactivation and preparedness. The shift from “freeze or flight” towards metaphors of awakening and readiness, reflected in the notion of ukuvuka (isiZulu: “to awaken” or “to rise up”), which signifies a re-emergence of agency and renewed capacity to act within constraining institutional environments. Within this framing, ukuvuka does not imply a sudden or complete transformation, but rather a gradual reactivation of movement and possibility under conditions where agency has been constrained.
“Between a rock and a hard place”: Surviving the Odds
Closely related to the freeze-or-flight narrative is a worldview centred on survival under conditions of persistent adversity. Participants invoked images of predators, storms, and wilderness landscapes to describe their research environments, framing researcher development as a struggle for endurance rather than progression.
“I will say I am just a little buck trapped in the bushveld that is trying to survive the lion.” (ED_12)
“It’s like trying to keep the house standing in the middle of a hurricane.” (ED_22)
Situated on the archplot, this narrative occupies the ordinary world disrupted by crisis, where the focus remains on coping with immediate threats rather than responding to a call for transformation. The future, within this worldview, is imagined as an extension of present instability, reinforcing a survivalist orientation that limits long-term strategic engagement with research development.
“Overwhelmed and over it”: Carrying a Heavy Load
A third narrative worldview was dominated by metaphors of burden, exhaustion, and overload, particularly among emerging and developing researchers. Participants described themselves as octopuses with too many tasks, or invoked mythological figures such as Atlas and Sisyphus to convey the sense of carrying an unrelenting weight. The metaphor of train surfing vividly captured the experience of trying to keep pace with accelerating research expectations:
“We find ourselves surfing just to keep up and not miss the train to be recognised in research.” (ED_28)
Within the archplot, this narrative is situated left of the midpoint, reflecting a stalled journey in which effort does not translate into progression. The imagined future within this worldview is characterised by fatigue rather than fulfilment, constraining the emergence of aspirational researcher identities and limiting engagement with alternative futures.
“The compliance game”: Paper Loyalty
Another dominant narrative worldview reflected a compliance-oriented positioning, in which alignment with institutional research expectations was performed symbolically rather than experienced as meaningful engagement. Participants used metaphors such as chameleons, hamsters on wheels, and paper planes to describe cycles of performative compliance driven by policies, metrics, and performance systems.
“I’m a chameleon… I do what is required on my IPMS, so there are no questions.” (EPL_1)
“I am a hamster running in a little wheel going nowhere.” (EPL_34)
Situated within the archplot, this narrative aligns with crossing thresholds without transformation, where movement occurs, but without a corresponding shift in identity or purpose. The future, as imagined within this worldview, remains constrained by administrative repetition and symbolic alignment, limiting the possibility of more generative researcher development trajectories
“The call of the wild”: Journey into the Unknown
In contrast to the preceding narratives, a fifth worldview emerged primarily among established researchers and research leaders, characterised by metaphors of expansion, opportunity, and renewal. Participants described their journeys using images of rockets launching, changing seasons, blossoming flowers, and doors opening to new pathways.
“It feels like we are now getting all of the elements together, in order to really take off and to flourish.” (EPL_4)
This narrative is the only one situated to the right of the midpoint of the archplot, corresponding to a journey into the unknown and a willingness to engage uncertainty as opportunity. Here, the future is imagined as open and navigable, with agency, experimentation, and growth foregrounded. The presence of this narrative alongside more constrictive worldviews highlights uneven access to futures across career stages and institutional roles.
Figure 2 illustrates how the five narrative worldviews are unevenly distributed across the monomythic archplot, with constrictive narratives clustering on the left of the midpoint and enabling narratives appearing primarily to the right, thereby visualising differential access to future-oriented agency.
Fig 2: Narrative worldviews mapped along the monomythic archplot
Figure 2 presents a simplified visual representation of the narrative worldviews identified in this study, mapped along the monomythic archplot. The figure operationalises the process of emplotment by situating dominant metaphorical narratives within a temporal and developmental sequence that reflects how researchers position themselves in relation to past experience, present conditions, and anticipated futures.
The upper axis represents the researcher’s journey as structured through the monomythic archplot, moving from the ordinary world through disruption, refusal, and threshold-crossing, toward stages associated with experimentation, mastery, and transformation. The midpoint serves as a critical inflection point within this narrative structure, distinguishing between constrictive narratives that remain oriented toward survival, overload, and compliance, and enabling narratives that reflect movement toward agency, growth, and future-oriented possibility.
The positioning of narrative worldviews along this axis illustrates a key finding of the study: the majority of researcher narratives cluster to the left of the midpoint, indicating that researchers are predominantly situated within phases of disruption, stalled transition, or constrained progression. These constrictive narratives, including “Why zebras don’t get ulcers,” “Between a rock and a hard place,” “Overwhelmed and over it,” and “The compliance game,” reflect limited access to future-oriented agency and a tendency toward coping, withdrawal, or symbolic compliance rather than transformative movement.
In contrast, the narrative “The call of the wild,” positioned to the right of the midpoint, represents a qualitatively different orientation in which uncertainty is engaged as opportunity and the future is experienced as navigable and open. The relative isolation of this narrative within the archplot underscores the uneven distribution of enabling futures across the researcher development ecosystem.
The lower axis introduces the researcher’s inner journey, providing a complementary representation of the underlying processes of sensemaking, resistance, adaptation, and re-engagement that accompany movement along the archplot. Concepts such as disruption, refusal, commitment to change, and experimentation reflect the internal narrative shifts required for progression, while the inclusion of ukuvuka (awakening) signals the potential reactivation of agency within otherwise constraining conditions.
Taken together, the figure demonstrates how emplotment functions as a futures-oriented sensemaking practice, revealing not only where researchers are positioned within dominant narratives, but also how movement toward preferred futures remains uneven, contingent, and often narratively constrained. In doing so, it provides a visual synthesis of the study’s central argument that researcher development futures are shaped by narrative positioning at the level of myth and metaphor, and that access to transformation is differentially experienced across the institutional landscape.
Summary of Narrative Positioning
Taken together, the five narrative worldviews reveal a landscape of unevenly distributed futures within the researcher development ecosystem. While some researchers are positioned within narratives that enable movement toward mastery and possibility, others remain anchored in survival, compliance, or overload. The spatial distribution of these narratives along the monomythic archplot underscores significant misalignments between lived experience and aspirational institutional futures, indicating that access to future-oriented agency is not experienced uniformly across career stages or roles.
Importantly, the coexistence of constrictive and enabling narratives suggests that researcher development futures are neither fixed nor but singular and contested and negotiated within the same institutional space. These narrative configurations provide the basis for further sensemaking through the Futures Triangle, where the interaction between historical constraints, present pressures, and future aspirations can be examined in greater depth.
Locating Alternative and Preferred Futures Through The Futures Triangle
Building on the narrative worldviews identified through the monomythic archplot analysis, this section employs Inayatullah’s Futures Triangle to further interrogate how researcher development futures are shaped by the interaction between historical constraints, present pressures, and future aspirations. The Futures Triangle conceptualises the future as a contested space formed through the dynamic interplay of the weight of the past, the push of the present, and the pull of the future (Fergnani, 2020).
Across both researcher groups, participants were able to articulate clear images of desirable and enabling futures for researcher development, represented as the pull of the future. These included aspirations for institutional commitment to research excellence, access to structured capacity-building programmes, and environments that support intellectual growth and innovation. These images reflect a shared recognition of what an enabling research ecosystem could become.
At the same time, these aspirational futures were counterbalanced by a substantial weight of the past, constituted by institutional barriers, administrative overload, and entrenched practices that participants experienced as constrictive. These historical and systemic constraints were closely aligned with the dominant problem narratives identified in the archplot analysis, many of which clustered at the base of the Futures Triangle. Participants consistently identified the lack of adequate and research-literate administrative support as a factor that limited meaningful change and undermined existing development initiatives:
“When I ask for assistance, all I receive are more forms and policies, without explanation or guidance.” (EPL_36)
The persistence of these constraining narratives suggests that, while institutional strategies may articulate future-oriented intentions, deep-seated myths and metaphors continue to shape how researcher development is experienced in practice (Inayatullah & Milojević, 2015; MacGill, 2015).
The push of the present was characterised by intensifying workloads, time scarcity, and competing institutional demands (Evans, 2011b; Bromley & Warnock, 2021). Participants across career stages highlighted the challenge of holding space for sustained research activity within an environment that prioritised administrative compliance and responsiveness. Notably, many researchers positioned themselves as observers rather than agents of change, expressing conditional willingness to engage in future-oriented initiatives only if immediate pressures were alleviated. This ambivalence was captured by a senior researcher who reflected:
“ I just call myself a glorified administrator now… there’s no dedicated time or respect for what I’m supposed to do as a researcher.” (EPL_18)
Figure 3 recontextualises the narrative worldviews identified in this study within Inayatullah’s Futures Triangle, illustrating how researcher development futures are shaped through the dynamic interaction between the weight of the past, the push of the present, and the pull of the future. While Figure 2 situates these narratives along a temporal archplot through emplotment, the Futures Triangle provides a complementary lens that foregrounds the structural and anticipatory forces influencing their persistence, transformation, and potential reconfiguration.
Fig 3: Futures Triangle illustrating constraining narratives, present pressures, and preferred researcher development futures identified in the study
The weight of the past is constituted by entrenched institutional practices, administrative burdens, and historically sedimented expectations that continue to shape how researcher development is experienced. These factors align closely with the constrictive narratives identified in the archplot analysis, particularly those associated with survival, overload, and compliance. As such, the past is not merely a temporal backdrop, but an active force that stabilises and reproduces limiting narrative configurations.
The push of the present reflects the intensification of contemporary demands, including performance pressures, policy expectations, and the increasing complexity of academic work within a technology-enabled environment. These present-day forces sustain the conditions under which many researchers remain positioned to the left of the archplot midpoint, reinforcing patterns of stalled transition and constrained agency.
In contrast, the pull of the future captures aspirational and enabling imaginaries of researcher development, including visions of research excellence, collaboration, innovation, and professional growth. These desired futures resonate with the enabling narrative identified in the archplot “The call of the wild”which reflects openness to possibility, experimentation, and forward movement. However, the relative weakness of this pull, when compared to the combined weight of past constraints and present pressures, limits the extent to which these futures are narratively inhabited by most researchers.
Taken together, the Futures Triangle reveals a critical misalignment between imagined futures and lived realities. While preferred futures are clearly articulated, their realisation remains constrained by the persistence of past narratives and the intensity of present demands. In this sense, the triangle complements the emplotment analysis by showing not only where researchers are positioned within narrative trajectories, but why movement toward preferred futures remains uneven and difficult to sustain.
By integrating the monomythic archplot with the Futures Triangle, the study demonstrates how narrative positioning and structural forces intersect to shape the reachability of futures within researcher development. This combined approach highlights that enabling futures are not only imagined but must be narratively and institutionally supported in order to become accessible and actionable.
Implications and Contribution
This paper contributes to futures studies by demonstrating that researcher development futures are shaped not only by institutional policies and resources, but by deeper narrative structures that enable or constrain researchers’ capacity to imagine and inhabit future possibilities. By extending CLA at the level of myth and metaphor through monomythic emplotment and the Futures Triangle, the study offers a futures-oriented sensemaking architecture for identifying stalled transitions, uneven access to future-oriented agency, and symbolic disconnections between present experience and preferred futures. Empirically grounded in an African open-distance learning context, and sensitised through the use of a culturally situated archetypal narrative, the paper advances futures research by illustrating how narrative positioning and cultural context shape the reachability of academic futures. In doing so, the paper demonstrates that the “hero’s journey,” as mobilised within Causal Layered Analysis, is not a universal narrative arc but a culturally contingent sensemaking structure, and that within a Global South higher education context, researcher development unfolds as a relational and negotiated passage shaped by constraint, uneven agency, and differential access to future-oriented possibility.
Rather than treating researcher development as a technical, managerial, or policy challenge alone, the analysis foregrounds the narratives, metaphors, and imaginaries through which researchers interpret their experiences and position themselves in relation to the future (Evans, 2012; Inayatullah, 2017).
The emplotment of situated metaphors across career stages reveals persistent gaps between problem narratives and solution narratives, even where these appear in close proximity along the monomythic archplot (Cowart, 2022; Carr, 1986).
This finding suggests that alternative and preferred futures are not absent or unimaginable, but remain symbolically disconnected from present lived experience (Inayatullah & Milojević, 2015). The “so what” of this insight is that researcher development initiatives may fail not because they lack strategic intent or resources, but because they do not engage the deeper narrative structures through which researchers make sense of change and assess whether future trajectories are attainable or credible.
The leftward clustering of narrative worldviews highlights a pattern of suspended transition, where future possibilities are visible but remain largely inaccessible within researchers’ lived experience. The findings indicate that only a limited subset of researchers – primarily established researchers and research leaders – are positioned within narratives that enable movement beyond the midpoint of the archplot. This uneven distribution of narrative positioning highlights structural and experiential inequalities within the researcher development ecosystem and illustrates how access to future-oriented agency is differentially distributed. In narrative terms, some researchers are already inhabiting future-oriented identities, while others remain anchored in survival-oriented or compliance-driven stories, limiting their capacity to imagine and enact alternative futures.
From a futures studies perspective, this paper contributes by showing that meaningful intervention in researcher development requires engagement at the level where futures are imagined, legitimised, and inhabited. Methodologically, the study extends the application of CLA at the myth and metaphor level through monomythic emplotment as a structured sensemaking device, demonstrating how futures can be “timed” imagistically and metaphorically to reveal both progressive and regressive orientations toward change (Cowart, 2022). In doing so, the paper illustrates how futures methods can surface why change stalls, where futures become inaccessible, and how alternative futures might become narratively reachable within higher education contexts.
Beyond the specific institutional context of this study, the futures-oriented approach developed here offers a transferable sensemaking architecture that may be adapted by other universities seeking to explore researcher development as a lived and future-shaping phenomenon. Rather than replicating specific narratives or outcomes, institutions can draw on the combined use of CLA, narrative foresight, monomythic emplotment, and the Futures Triangle to surface contextually situated metaphors, identify narrative disjunctures, and examine how access to future-oriented agency is unevenly experienced. In this way, the value of the approach lies not in standardisation, but in its capacity to support reflexive, context-sensitive inquiry into how academic futures are imagined, constrained, and made navigable across diverse higher education settings.
While this study did not explicitly analyse researcher narratives through a gendered lens, the findings resonate with prior work highlighting how dominant futures narratives often privilege linear, agentic, and mastery-oriented trajectories (Milojević, 2008). In contrast, the constrictive narratives identified in this study may reflect not only institutional pressures, but also differential positioning within academic systems shaped by gendered expectations and access to opportunity. Future research could extend this analysis by examining how narrative worldviews of researcher development intersect with gender, voice, and epistemic positioning.
Conclusion
This study has demonstrated the value of engaging the lived experiences of researchers through the myth and metaphor layer of CLA as a means of understanding researcher development as a layered, interpretive, and future-shaping phenomenon. By foregrounding narrative sensemaking, the inquiry moves beyond technical or policy-centred accounts of researcher development to reveal how identities, assumptions, and imaginaries shape researchers’ capacity to engage with institutional futures. In doing so, the analysis provides a more holistic view of the research environment and illuminates why strategic intentions may fail to translate into experienced possibility.
The contribution of this study is twofold. It shows that researcher development ecosystems cannot be meaningfully reimagined without attending to the narrative conditions through which researchers experience change, pressure, and opportunity (Inayatullah & Milojević, 2015; Cowart, 2022).
First, it shows that researcher development ecosystems cannot be meaningfully reimagined without attending to the narrative conditions through which researchers experience change, pressure, and opportunity. By situating researcher experiences within a layered futures framework, the study highlights how innovation and transformation depend not only on structures and resources but also on whether researchers can locate themselves within credible and attainable future narratives. Second, the use of monomythic emplotment as a sensemaking device extends the application of CLA at the myth and metaphor level, offering a way to locate discourses along a past–present–future continuum and to surface misalignments between problem narratives and solution imaginaries within the South African higher education context.
While CLA offers a powerful multidimensional approach to engaging complexity, the study also acknowledges its limitations. Sensemaking at the level of myth and metaphor is inherently interpretive and context-sensitive, requiring careful reflexivity and sustained engagement with the data. The process can be time-intensive, and findings are shaped by the positionalities of both participants and researchers. These characteristics limit claims of standardisation or universality; however, they also constitute the method’s strength, enabling depth, plurality, and sensitivity to lived experience in contexts characterised by uncertainty and change.
Overall, the significance of this study lies in its demonstration of how futures-oriented sensemaking can enrich understandings of researcher development by revealing where futures become constrained, unevenly accessible, or narratively disconnected from present experience. By engaging the deeper narrative layers through which academic futures are imagined and inhabited, this approach creates space for more inclusive, reflexive, and contextually responsive engagements with institutional transformation. In this way, the paper contributes not only to futures scholarship, but to broader conversations on how universities might navigate complexity by attending to the stories through which their futures are made meaningful.
References
Adams, K. (2004). Modelling success: Enhancing international postgraduate research students’ self-efficacy for research seminar presentations. Higher Education Research & Development, 23(2), 115–130. https://doi.org/10.1080/0729436042000206618
Åkerlind, G. S. (2008). An academic perspective on research and being a researcher: An integration of the literature. Studies in Higher Education, 33(1), 17–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070701794775
Aston, J. (2024). There’s more to life than the monomyth: Multiperspectival approaches to teaching narrative and story in university film and media departments. Media Practice and Education, 25(2), 123–136. https://doi.org/10.1080/25741136.2024.2331342
Bromley, T., & Warnock, L. (2021). The practice of the development of researchers: The “state-of-the-art”. Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education, 12(2), 283–299. https://doi.org/10.1108/SGPE-12-2019-0084
Bruce, G., Pham, B., & Stoodley, I. (2004). Constituting the significance and value of research: Views from information technology academics and industry professionals. Studies in Higher Education, 29(2), 219–238. https://doi.org/10.1080/0307507042000190804
Campbell, J. (1949/2008). The hero with a thousand faces (3rd ed.). New World Library.
Carbonell, J., Sánchez-Esguevillas, A., & Carro, B. (2016). The role of metaphors in the development of technologies. The case of the artificial intelligence. Futures, 84, 145–153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2016.03.019
Carr, D. (1986). Narrative and the real world: An argument for continuity. History and Theory, 25(2), 117–131. https://doi.org/10.2307/2505301
Castañeda, L., & Selwyn, N. (2018). More than tools? Making sense of the ongoing digitizations of higher education. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 15, Article 22. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-018-0109-y
Castro Benavides, L. M., Tamayo Arias, J. A., Arango Serna, M. D., Branch Bedoya, J. W., & Burgos, D. (2020). Digital transformation in higher education institutions: A systematic literature review. Sensors, 20(11), 3291. https://doi.org/10.3390/s20113291
Coleridge, S. T., Smith-Barbaro, P., & Knisley, C. (2004). A practical method for increasing scholarly activity in an academic family medicine department. Teaching and Learning in Medicine, 16(2), 181–185. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328015tlm1602_11
Cornelissen, J. P. (2006). Making sense of theory construction: Metaphor and disciplined imagination. Organization Studies, 27(11), 1579–1597. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840606068333
Cowart, A. (2022). Living between myth and metaphor: Level 4 of Causal Layered Analysis theorised. Journal of Futures Studies, 27(2), 18–27. https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.202212_27(2).0003
Evans, L. (2011a). The scholarship of researcher development: Mapping the terrain and pushing back boundaries. International Journal for Researcher Development, 2(2), 75–98. https://doi.org/10.1108/17597511111212691
Evans, L. (2011b). What research administrators need to know about researcher development: Towards a new conceptual model. The Journal of Research Administration, 42(1), 15–37. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ954989.pdf
Evans, L. (2012). Leadership for researcher development: What research leaders need to know and understand. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 40(4), 423–435. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143212438218
Fergnani, A. (2020). Futures triangle 2.0: Integrating the futures triangle with scenario planning. Foresight, 22(2), 178–188. https://doi.org/10.1108/FS-10-2019-0092
Hajar, A. (2021). Theoretical foundations of phenomenography: A critical review. Higher Education Research & Development, 40(7), 1421–1436. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2020.1833844
Hanney, R. (2024). One myth to rule them all and in the darkness bind them: A critical examination of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. Media Practice and Education, 25(2), 113–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/25741136.2024.2333649
Heinonen, S., & Minkkinen, M. (2016). Interpreting built cityscape: Deconstructing the metaphorical messages of futuristic buildings. Futures, 84, 163–177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2016.03.015
Honko, L. (1984). The problem of defining myth. In A. Dundes (Ed.), Sacred narrative: Readings in the theory of myth (pp. 41–52). University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520352131-005
Inayatullah, S. (2015). The continued evolution of the use of CLA: Using practice to transform. In S. Inayatullah & I. Milojević (Eds.), CLA 2.0: Transformative research in theory and practice (pp. 13–24). Tamkang University Press.
Inayatullah, S. (2017, April). Causal layered analysis. Prospective and strategic foresight toolbox. Futuribles International. https://www.metafuture.org/library1/2019/CLATOOLBOX2017FUTURIBLES.pdf
Inayatullah, S., & Milojević, I. (Eds.). (2015). CLA 2.0: Transformative research in theory and practice. Tamkang University Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.
MacGill, V. (2015). Unravelling the myth/metaphor layer in Causal Layered Analysis. Journal of Futures Studies, 20(1), 55–68. https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.2015.20(1).A55
Marton, F., & Säljö, R. (1976). On qualitative differences in learning: I—Outcome and process. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 46(1), 4–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1976.tb02980.x
Milojević, I. (2008). Ourselves among others: Relational feminism and futures studies. Futures, 40(4), 329–345. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2007.08.023
Milojević, I., & Inayatullah, S. (2015). Narrative foresight. Futures, 73, 151–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.08.007
Ramos, J. M. (2015). Transcendence of a method: The story of causal layered analysis. In S. Inayatullah & I. Milojević (Eds.), CLA 2.0: Transformative research in theory and practice (pp. 25–44). Tamkang University Press.
Rogers, B. A., Chicas, H., Kelly, J. M., Kubin, E., Christian, M. S., Kachanoff, F. J., Berger, J., Puryear, C., McAdams, D. P., & Gray, K. (2023). Seeing your life story as a hero’s journey increases meaning in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 125(4), 752–778. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000341
Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why zebras don’t get ulcers: The acclaimed guide to stress, stress-related diseases, and coping (3rd ed.). Henry Holt and Company.
Slaughter, R. A. (2001). Knowledge creation, futures methodologies and the integral agenda. Foresight, 3(5), 407–418. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636680110697129
Spencer, F. W., IV, & Salvatico, Y. M. (2015). Creating stories of change: Reframing causal layered analysis as narrative transformation. In S. Inayatullah & I. Milojević (Eds.), CLA 2.0: Transformative research in theory and practice (pp. 78–89). Tamkang University Press.
Tang, K. (2024, November 13). Myth in CLA: A cross-cultural challenge. Journal of Futures Studies. https://jfsdigital.org/myth-in-cla-a-cross-cultural-challenge/
Wylie, D. (2006). Myth of iron: Shaka in history. University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the participating researchers for their generous engagement and feedback during the inquiry. We are grateful to the university’s senior leadership, particularly the Office of Research and Innovation, for providing access to institutional data, logistical support, and a conducive environment for co-design workshops.
Declaration of interest
This study was conducted as part of the authors’ professional roles within the university. The authors declare no other competing financial or personal interests that could have influenced the work reported in this paper. No external funding was received for the conduct of this research.