that gap between the past and the present

Because of the PhD studies I was effectively away from the institution where I work for five years. I'm realising that, the gap between 'the past' and 'the present' is where insincerity, insecurity and cowardice play. I've lost a history, an understanding of how things work and how they have developed and progressed in that five year gap. I'm not sure I can make it up. I'm trying - and I've decided to bring the PhD into service to help me overcome the problems presented by that gap - especially my own insecurities related to having lost my footing in the status and other hierarchies in the department. But equally interesting and sometimes difficult for me to handle are the insecurities and insincerity I encounter from colleagues, which I feel ill equipped to deal with because of the 'gap' burden. Often when I'm unable to 'deal' with what is thrown at me I interpret my response as cowardice - because I fail to act even when I know I should, and I appear, to myself anyway, to take the easy route and slip out of view.

I've been told that my position as Senior Lecturer (one I earned through the newly introduced Ad Hominen promotion system at my institution just before I left) means that I should take on an 'academic leadership' role with a portfolio of responsibility - just like the other Senior Lecturers in the department - all of whom were appointed to a specific administrative post like to this title. While this phrase 'academic leadership' is being used to position this role - especially for my benefit - I can't help feeling a hollowness, bordering on insincerity in how it is translated in practice. My reading of the sub-text implies that I'm not or haven't taken on and acted rightfully in my assigned position within the department (so I haven't shown academic leadership). However, nothing in how the department is currently structured has created the possibility for me to act or be seen to act in this position. I still haven't been asked to join the extended management meetings - so one of the technicians in our department has a permanent 'spot' on this forum, but not me. Of course my response - which has been not to explicitly highlight this omission to the powers is underpinned by a willingness to sit under the radar and smile almost cunningly knowing that I'm therefore not required to attend boring 3-4 hours meetings and thus allowed to write instead or get on with other more important academic 'stuff'. I'm complicit in my own invisibility while realising that just like I carry the burden of the gap in my history, the institution/department still operates very much in the past where leadership and seniority is also constructive in administrative terms - just like the technikon environment which is the ghost of our present institutional self. So they want to play the 'academic' game and seemingly talk the 'academic' language that might suggest they are in 'the game' but really do they really have any sense of what it is?