This story recounts a succession of transitions through higher education, from first generation undergraduate, via periods of professional practice as Probation Officer and teacher, to semi-retired ‘Visiting Research Fellow’ status. The conventional notion of a ‘career’ as a planned, linear, uninterrupted and progressive trajectory does not actually mirror many people’s experiences and certainly not those of this author. The account is divided into three sections: From Home to University refers to the period between leaving school and gaining academic and professional qualifications before becoming a full-time researcher; From Professional practice to Research practice covers a period of twenty years spent capitalising on some of the skills acquired in professional positions, in the role of full-time researcher on a succession of funded projects in different fields (health service delivery; the intra-household distribution of income in families in receipt of benefits; students’ experiences of higher education), at different universities and in different disciplinary environments (sociology/social policy; management/organisation studies; education); and From Academic labourer to ‘Self’-employed Researcher relates to the transition from ‘subaltern’ positions in the academy to employing/deploying myself, by undertaking independent research and by maintaining an academic identity post- official retirement, through autoethnography. Personal and professional changes and transitions are set within a context of wider political and institutional change, through which experiences of uncertainty and precarity once associated only with ‘contract research’ have become widespread in higher education. Some elements of the journey through these transitions are identified as protective of the ‘self’ and as enhancing resilience.