1. Introduction.- Section 1: Early Career Instructor Experiences.- 2. Unsure, stumbling, and finding joy in teaching: Building confidence as an Early Career Instructor.- 3. Teaching global, considering the local: Compassion, locations of authority, and feminist approaches to instructing IR .- 4. From International to Domestic (and Back Again?).-5.Affective Conversations on Teaching and Research: Power, Gender, and ‘Making the Sandwiches’.- 6. Digital Pedagogie-Z: Generating Care, Generative Technologies, and Generational Trauma.- 7. Systemic Support for ECIs: Signaling Values in the Neoliberal University.- 8. Neoliberalism Vs. D.E.I.: the market and profit-driven limitations of inclusivity.- 9. How Early Career Instructors Benefit From Collaborative Course Design.- 10. Teaching Research Inside and Outside the Classroom.- 11. Reaching Beyond the Ivory Tower: Early Career Instructors and the Pedagogy of Policy Relevance.- 12. Navigating Trigger Warnings, Classroom Speech, and Public Debates as an Early Career Instructor.-Section 2: Training, Mentorship, and Institutional Contexts.- 13. Critical Reflection and Early Career Instructor Formation.- 14. Doing it for Ourselves: Creating Spaces for, and by, Early Career Instructors.- 15. Discipline-Specific Teaching and Pedagogical Development: A Missing Piece in Canadian Political Science Graduate Education.- 16. Pedagogical Mentorship for Mutual Benefit.- 17. Professional Associations in Early Career Development: Getting There Faster, Higher and Stronger.- 18. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: building supportive communities.- 19. Can “the Literature” Be a Mentor? Early Career Instructors Write a Review Article.- 20. Mentoring teaching-focused ECIs in a marketized Higher Education sector.- 21. Preparing Early -Career Instructors for Context-Dependent Teaching.- 22. Conclusion.

In doctoral programs, graduate students are often encouraged to prioritize their research over teaching. This leads many early career scholars to identify primarily with the role of researcher. This edited collection introduces the term “early career instructor” (ECI) as a novel concept in understanding the experience of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, early tenure-track, contingent faculty, and other scholars early in their teaching careers. Including a diverse array of authors, this volume brings together essays on ECI experiences in different institutional and national contexts as well as reflections on current practices for ECI support and mentorship. At a higher level, this volume is also a call-to-action to recognize the importance of teaching in the early career stage.

Michael P. A. Murphy is Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University and Centre for International & Defence Policy, Canada.

Misbah Hyder is Visiting Assistant Professor for the Teaching Excellence Center at the United States Naval War College.