Home > People > Kelsey Inouye

Kelsey Inouye

Research Associate | Jesus College

kelsey.inouye@education.ox.ac.uk

About me

Kelsey is a Research Associate at the Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance, and a Supernumerary Fellow at Jesus College. Her research areas include:

Doctoral education
Academic writing and publishing
PhD career trajectories beyond academia
Student/researcher agency

Currently, Kelsey works on the ‘Close the Gap’ project (funded by OFS and Research England), which aims to transform the PhD selection and admissions processes at Oxford and Cambridge towards the goal of a more inclusive research culture.

Previously, Kelsey was a Senior Researcher at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland from 2021-2022, and served as the Junior Coordinator for the EARLI SIG 24 on Researcher Education and Careers from 2019-2023. She holds a DPhil in Education from the University of Oxford (Clarendon Scholar), and a JD from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Research

Book chapters

Mills, D., & Inouye, K. (2024). Research integrity in publishing: decolonial perspectives. In Handbook of Meta-Research (pp. 251-262). Edward Elgar Publishing.

https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839105722.00028
Inouye, K., & Bengtsen, S. (2023). New Spaces for Agency in Doctoral Education: An Ecological Approach. In Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education (pp. 217-239). Springer Nature.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44885-0_9
Skakni, I., & Inouye, K. (2023). Preparing for the World Outside Academia: Avoiding Organisational Culture Shock. In Developing Researcher Independence Through the Hidden Curriculum (pp. 241-249). Springer Nature.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42875-3_22

Journal articles

Inouye, K., Robson, J., Anaiz, P., Baker, S., & Ilie, S. (2025). Assessing the person or the project? How disciplinary ontological and epistemological assumptions shape doctoral admissions in elite UK institutions. Higher Education.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-025-01438-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-025-01438-8
Barnett, R., & Inouye, K. (2024). Seven pains of writing: The discomforts of academic becoming in a judgmental age. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education.

https://doi.org/10.1177/14740222241305781
Inouye, K., & McAlpine, L. (2023). Writing across contexts: Relationships between doctoral writing and workplace writing beyond the academy. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 60(4), 534-543.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2022.2075431
Inouye, K. (2023). Developing the PhD thesis project in relation to individual contexts: a multiple case study of five doctoral researchers. Higher Education, 85(5), 1143-1160.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00882-0
Inouye, K., Lee, S., & Oldac, Y. (2022). A systematic review of student agency in international higher education. Higher Education, 1-21.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00952-3
McAlpine, L., & Inouye, K. (2022). What value do PhD graduates offer? An organizational case study. Higher Education Research & Development, 41(5), 1648-1663.

https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2021.1945546
Sala-Bubaré, A., Skakni, I., Inouye, K., Weise, C., & McAlpine, L. (2022). Early career researchers making sense of their research experiences: a cross-role and cross-national analysis. Compare A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 52(5), 748-767.

https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2020.1834349
Skakni, I., Inouye, K., & McAlpine, L. (2022). PhD holders entering non-academic workplaces: organisational culture shock. Studies in Higher Education, 47(6), 1271-1283.

https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2021.1876650
McAlpine, L., & Inouye, K. (2022). PhD graduates in non-academic roles: harnessing communication knowledge to meet organizational goals. Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education, 13(2), 151-170.

https://doi.org/10.1108/sgpe-05-2021-0044
Wisker, G., McGinn, M., Bengtsen, S., Lokhtina, I., He, F., Cornér, S., Leshem, S., Inouye, K., & Löfström, E. (2021). Remote doctoral supervision experiences: Challenges and affordances. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 58(6), 612-623.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2021.1991427
McAlpine, L., Skakni, I., Sala-Bubaré, A., Weise, C., & Inouye, K. (2021). Examining cross-national research teamwork: revealing rewards and challenges. Qualitative Research Journal, 21(4), 361-374.

https://doi.org/10.1108/qrj-06-2020-0067
McAlpine, L., Skakni, I., & Inouye, K. (2021). Phd careers beyond the traditional: integrating individual and structural factors for a richer account. European Journal of Higher Education, 11(4), 365-385.

https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2020.1870242
Mills, D., Branford, A., Inouye, K., Robinson, N., & Kingori, P. (2021). “Fake” journals and the fragility of authenticity: citation indexes, “predatory” publishing, and the African research ecosystem. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 33(3), 276-296.

https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2020.1864304 https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a366eb0b-7c70-4c90-9564-79f686cfba6e
Inouye, K., & Mills, D. (2021). Fear of the academic fake? Journal editorials and the amplification of the ’predatory publishing’ discourse. Learned Publishing, 34(3), 396-406.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1377 https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7a57f207-9ed2-4927-951c-09e4c28fcf7e
Castelló, M., McAlpine, L., Sala-Bubaré, A., Inouye, K., & Skakni, I. (2021). What perspectives underlie ‘researcher identity’? A review of two decades of empirical studies. Higher Education, 81(3), 567-590.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00557-8
Mills, D., & Inouye, K. (2020). Problematizing ‘predatory publishing’: A systematic review of factors shaping publishing motives, decisions, and experiences. Learned Publishing, 34(2), 89-104.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1325 https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f25e629a-225f-4630-947d-52defce45bd9
Inouye, K., & McAlpine, L. (2019). Developing Academic Identity: A Review of the Literature on Doctoral Writing and Feedback. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 14, 001-031.

https://doi.org/10.28945/4168
Inouye, K., & McAlpine, L. (2017). Developing scholarly identity: Variation in agentive responses to supervisor feedback. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 14(2).