by Sue Nichols and Garth Stahl Aspiration is centrally concerned with becoming, and inherently frames the present in terms of the future desired self. The moment at which a young person graduates from school is a nexus point for aspirational… Read More ›
Tag Archive for ‘higher education’
The Central European University in Budapest Under Threat of Closure
by Giovanni Picker The Central European University (CEU) is an English-speaking, postgraduate private university in Budapest, Hungary, specialising in the humanities and social sciences. It was established in 1991 by, among others, George Soros, its most important donor. The university… Read More ›
The (Coming) Crisis of Free Speech in the Digital University
In the last couple of years, prominent commentators have increasingly claimed there is a crisis of free speech in higher education. Well meaning participants in reasoned debate are apparently unable to move without being accosted by left-wing activists keen to shut them… Read More ›
The ambivalent promise of higher education
In the latest collection of talks from Audrey Watters, The Curse of the Monsters of Educational Technology, she addresses an uncomfortable issue in higher education: the unrealistic claims made about the transformative aspect of university attendance. From loc 397-413: These… Read More ›
BREAKING NEWS: Social Science Faculty at Humboldt-University Berlin occupied!
Well, this is not breaking news. The occupation of the Social Science Faculty of the HU-Berlin started last Wednesday, 18 January, but I only found out about it today. Although I work in an institute which is part of the… Read More ›
Squeezing Us ‘Till It Hurts: Motherhood, Discrimination, and Universities
by Deborah Talbot The Final Report of the Equalities Review, published by Equalities Commission in 2007, reviewed a range of persistent inequalities including those that affect women. It argued that, ‘…new research reveals clearly that there is one factor that… Read More ›
Sociological Catalysts and Operationalising Theory in Practice
by Yusef Bakkali Life as an academic can be a lonely and alienating calling at the best of times; lots of time spent inside one’s own head reflecting on a world playing out someplace beyond the indiscernible turrets and bulwarks… Read More ›
The Uberficiation of the University
A fascinating short book by Gary Hall, available open access at the Coventry University repository: https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/file/4b7671d5-371f-438b-83c7-9275935550f8/1/ubercomb.pdf
Academia.edu: How to reproduce inequality in several easy steps
A study waiting to be done. Somebody? Here is the trigger: So: how is academia.edu reproducing and reinforcing inequality? By spatially positioning the male academic above; By choosing an older male academic and a younger female; By listing the male as… Read More ›
Social Media and Open Research: What Does ‘Open’ Mean?
In the not too distant past, the use of social media in higher education was seen as a curiosity at best. Perhaps something to be explained or inquired into but certainly not something deemed relevant to scholarship. Yet it’s now increasingly… Read More ›
Some recent articles about the accelerated academy
Academic Capitalism and the Accelerated Academy by Liz Morrish The Shifting Sources of Hostility to the Accelerated Academy by Steve Fuller One more time with (structures) of feeling by Jana Bacevic Big data, new skills: how the accelerated academy hinders the… Read More ›
Call for Papers: The Accelerated Academy
From the 1980s onward, there has been an unprecedented growth of institutions and procedures for auditing and evaluating university research. Quantitative indicators are now widely used from the level of individual researchers to that of entire universities, serving to make… Read More ›
Higher Education & Race Inequalities
Tenure Denied At Dartmouth, an Asian-American professor receives unanimous English department backing and is rejected at higher levels. The same happened to a black historian at the college. Many see a disturbing pattern. More on this story on Inside Higher… Read More ›
What does integrity mean in a digital age? Self-branding, promotion and why Mark Zuckerberg probably doesn’t like you
An extract from Social Media for Academics by Mark Carrigan As a teenager I was captivated by Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I’d enjoyed fiction prior to this but there was a certain quality to the story that left it… Read More ›
Will digital technology doom higher education or save it?
I’m an enthusiast about social media for academics. But for all the examples I see around me of social media enriching and enhancing scholarly practice, it’s hard not to be concerned by the broader context within which this is taking place…. Read More ›
Creativity inside and outside universities
by Deborah Talbot The Alternative Academia Network held its second meeting on the 14th February 2016. The aim is to discuss how creativity works inside and outside universities. The following are notes from the presentation by Deborah Talbot, which explores… Read More ›
‘Projectification’ in academic knowledge production
Oili-Helena Ylijoki talking at the Accelerated Academy in December:
Plagiarism
by Michael Palkowski Professor Steve Fuller, an eminent sociologist at the university of Warwick recently published a provocative blog post on the ways in which academia deals with plagiarism, titled “Plagiarism: Observations on Academia’s Self-Induced Moral Panic”. In this article,… Read More ›
Academic life in the measured university: pleasures, paradoxes and politics
The University of Sydney June 29th to July 1st 2016 Conference website: https://www.itl.usyd.edu.au/getinvolved/aic2016/submissions.htm Submissions To submit CLICK HERE Submissions are due by Friday 15 January 2016. Themes The conference welcomes submissions from staff and students (especially collaborations among students, and between staff… Read More ›
Academia Obscura – something silly for a Monday afternoon
Academia Obscura is proof that the university life isn’t all stuffiness, elbow patches and greying old men. Researcher (and procrastinating PhD student) Glen Wright takes an irreverent look inside the ivory tower, uncovering the amusing and often bizarre world within…. Read More ›
Precarious labour in higher education
HT to NotRightRuth for sharing this amazing Doonesbury cartoon:
The fiction future of faculty: an afternoon of sociological design fiction
I’m organising a design fiction event in Manchester on September 16th, with James Duggan and Joseph Lindley. It’ll be great. You can register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-fiction-future-of-faculty-an-afternoon-of-sociological-design-fiction-tickets-18169546603 The ability of storytelling to help us envision and discuss a gamut of plausible futures, from… Read More ›
Who’s more popular on twitter? the UK’s top research universities or academic blogs and viral feeds?
Comparing the follower counts for Twitter feeds based on the 2014 REF results (i.e. I mean ‘top’ in a very narrow sense) and an unsystematically chosen selection of the Twitter feeds I’ve been scrutinising this morning as I finish off the book. Oxford University: 231,000 Cambridge… Read More ›
Oppression and self-promotion on social media
This is a really important post by Eric Grollman that has helped me rethink a part of Social Media for Academics that I was struggling with. The systematic generation of imposter syndrome within the academy is a crucial mechanism through which the costs… Read More ›
Using snapchat in higher education
I’ve struggled to see how Snapchat could be used within higher education. I could imagine why academics might end up using it in an entirely personal capacity, but I found it difficult to imagine how it could be used by them professionally…. Read More ›
Social media and solidarity in higher education
There’s a great article on the THE, in which Caroline Magennis reflects on the success of the conversation she started recently about being an academic from a less privileged background: What are the challenges of being an academic from a less privileged background? Questions… Read More ›
Beyond the Neoliberal University, 18th September at Coventry University
BEYOND THE NEO-LIBERAL UNIVERSITY CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND ACTIVISM COVENTRY UNIVERSITY – FRIDAY 18th SEPTEMBER 2015 Warwick UCU committee encourages you to attend this UCU-sponsored event. Around the world there have been a whole series of occupations and protests led by… Read More ›
Alt-academic careers #1: Benjamin Geer
By Benjamin Geer I left a successful career as a software developer in London to study Arabic and do a PhD in Middle East Studies. I then had a traditional one-year visiting assistant professor job (in Egypt) and a traditional… Read More ›
Job: Race in the Academy
This seems like an important project: Please do circulate these details for a Research Officer at the LSE to examine ‘Race in the Academy’. This is an exciting qualitative research project that will examine the factors behind the lack of black… Read More ›