The different facets of an academic's identity: The effects of recontextualisation on the identities of writers in The Conversation

This chapter explores how academic writers construct and negotiate their identities when recontextualising expert knowledge for The Conversation, a digital dissemination platform. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of 30 articles, we examine how first person pronouns and hyperlinks are used to perform distinct writer roles: Autobiographer, Researcher, Proposer, and Advocate. While writers predominantly inhabit the Researcher identity, the affordances of digital platforms allow for the emergence of less conventional academic identities that foreground personal experience, societal engagement and advocacy. We argue that digital recontextualisation not only transforms scientific content for a broader audience but also reshapes the visibility and legitimacy of the writer. Hyperlinks serve a dual purpose: enhancing the credibility of the research and reinforcing the academic persona through external validation. Our findings contribute to a growing body of research on writer identity in online genres, suggesting that digital spaces encourage a hybridisation of academic and journalistic discourse where identity performance becomes integral to knowledge communication.