ABSTRACT. Academic knowledge production is frequently presented as a neutral and meritocratic enterprise guided by methodological rigour. This article challenges that narrative by examining how research practices are shaped by institutional conditions, academic socialisation and researchers’ lived experiences. Drawing on critical autoethnography and quantitative data from a virtual exchange study on foreign language anxiety and self-disclosure, it introduces the concept of the Procrustean paradigm to describe how academic knowledge production privileges conformity by fitting complex realities into established methodological frameworks. The empirical findings reveal the limited explanatory power of commonly used sociobiographical variables such as gender and age, while highlighting the importance of context and situated experience. These findings become an empirical crack through which broader questions emerge about the categories and assumptions routinely treated as methodologically neutral. By connecting quantitative results with embodied doctoral experience, the article argues that knowledge production is shaped by precarity, institutional expectations and disciplinary norms. It concludes by advocating more reflexive, caring and epistemically humble approaches to research and knowledge production.

Keywords: critical autoethnography; doctoral education; academic precarity; communities of care; situated knowledge; methodological reflexivity

How to cite: Fondo, M. (2026). Breaking the academic fairytale: The Procrustean paradigm of knowledge production, researcher survival and methodological conformity in contemporary academia. Knowledge Cultures, 14(2), 38–58. https://doi.org/10.22381/kc14220263

Received February 28, 2026 • Received in revised form June 29, 2026
Accepted July 15, 2026 • Available online August 1, 2026