Diversity, Democratisation and Difference: Theories and MethodologiesImpact: Epistemic and Social Closures?

Professor Louise Morley

Centre for Higher Educationand Equity Research (CHEER)University of Sussex, UK

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer

Provoking Impact• Financialization = research an object of

surveillance. • Technicization of knowledge?• Clumsy articulation of aspects of social attitudes

to which politicians find it expedient to appeal (Collini, 2012).

• Expository tactic/ social transparency• Idealised abstraction/Clearing discursive debris • Turning research into a contract model (Holmwood,

2014).

• Neo-liberal capitalism transferring research into an opportunity for consumerism.

• Rectilinear accounts of cause/ effect• Management by Numbers/ Making individuals

calculable (Cooke, 2013).

• Bourdieu’s concept of illusio – the investment in the game (Colley, 2013).

• Academics affectively orientated to participate in self-frustrating and punitive research funding regimes.

Knowing Women: History Written by Victors• Gendered monopoly of the research

economy• 4 out of 5 professors in Europe = men (Husu, 2014).

• UK 2008 RAE = men 40% more likely than women to be entered.

Women less likely to be: Journal editors/ cited in top-rated academic

journals (Wilson, 2012).

Principal investigators Represented on research boards/peer review

structures allocating funding (EC, 2011).

Awarded fewer research prizes (Nikiforova, 2011)

Keynote speakers at prestigious academic conferences (Schroeder et al., 2013).

Troubling Values in the Research Economy

• Knowledge capitalism generating/reinforcing inequalities and social hierarchies.

• Research/researcher identities = constructed/reinforced via the optics and apparatus of neo-liberalism.

• What is valued in research and scholarship = shaped by market demands.

• Lower UK success rates for curiosity-driven funding (Else, 2014).

• Feminist research = credibility deficit?

• Counter-hegemonic research= unfundable/ unknowable? (Butler, 2006).

Follow Up?

• Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER)

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer

Follow CHEER on Twitter

https://twitter.com/intent/userscreen_name=SussexCHEER