This paper draws on two empirical studies to consider the impacts of policy change on academic identities in the United Kingdom. It thus offers a limited examination of claims that social, political and economic transformations at the end of the 20th century have undermined the structures and relationships, within which academic identities have been sustained, particularly those of the discipline and the higher education institution. Its main conclusions are that academic identities remained surprisingly stable in the period under study, although the longer-term outlook remains uncertain.