About the project
The backdrop for the research project is the massive changes that have taken place in Norwegian academia and higher education the past 20 years. These are part of a wider global and European shift from meritocracy to standardised evaluation forms in the sector. Contemporary academia is shaped by what international scholars have named ‘audit culture’, ‘academic capitalism’, ‘academic corporatisation’ and ‘metrics governance’. These transformations in academic culture and governance affectively produce ‘winners’ and ‘losers’.
We employ narrative interviews and psychosocial interpretation methods to engage with the tensions, paradoxes and joys of academic life as experienced by PhD students, post doctors and professors in the humanities and social sciences. We investigate what motivational forms, ways-of-knowing and relating are promoted and which are inhibited in the encounter with these new modes of academic governance. We furthermore ask: What are the conditions of possibility for epistemic diversity in this setting?
Theoretically we are particularly inspired by socialist feminism, psychosocial theory and Critical Theory, as these are perspectives that enable us to explicate the tension between intensified competition and human needs and potentials.
Financing
Funded by the Norwegian Research Council, BALANSE-programmet 2019-2024, Project number: 296510