Grounded in Anthony Giddens’ theory of life politics, this study explores how broader social transformations shape the academic lifeworld and how university faculty negotiate the tensions arising from the entanglement of personal and professional spheres. The research aims to elucidate the processes through which academics, situated within structural and discursive forces, engage in reflexive self-examination and adopt strategies to reclaim agency and maintain a sense of professional and personal coherence. Empirical data were derived from two qualitative sources: personal narratives of lived experience and semi-structured interviews with ten assistant professors at Allameh Tabataba’i University, University of Tehran. Thematic analysis revealed that academic lifestyles are embedded within a complex and dynamic network of contextual, institutional, and ideological conditions that continuously shape everyday academic practices.



To conceptualize this network of interactions, Bronfenbrenner’s polysystem theory was employed, encompassing five interdependent levels. The microsystem addresses individual relationships and routine practices; the mesosystem captures the interplay among multiple roles, including teacher, researcher, translator, and parent; the macrosystem reflects societal discourses and prevailing ideological forces; the exosystem considers educational, economic, and policy contexts that indirectly influence university functioning; and the chronosystem accounts for historical and structural transformations, such as war, inflation, and technological change, which shape both institutional and individual trajectories.



Findings indicate that faculty demonstrate critical self-awareness regarding the imperatives of life politics, adopting strategies of negotiation, self-regulation, and boundary management to balance institutional expectations with personal aspirations. This suggests that the academic lifeworld is neither autonomous nor static; rather, it constitutes a contested and evolving field in which agency and structural constraints continuously interact. Academic identity, therefore, is fluid, continually renegotiated, and shaped through the reciprocal influence of internal reflexivity and external pressures. By integrating life politics theory with a polysystemic perspective, this study provides a nuanced understanding of how academics construct, sustain, and transform professional identities within the interrelated spheres of social, institutional, and personal life, highlighting the ongoing negotiation between autonomy and structural embeddedness.