School of Social and Political Science

Description

Unlike almost most other studies of neoliberal universities and academic capitalism this book ethnographically explores and interprets those transformations and their contradictions empirically in the everyday practices of students, faculty members, and administrators at two public universities: NTNU in Norway and UCLA in California.

Differently situated in global political economies, both are ambitious, prosperous campuses. The book reflexively examines their disturbing disputes about quality, competition, and innovation. It argues that some academic, bureaucratic, and corporate university governance practices are both unsustainable and undermining what some university students and faculty already do well: circulate interdisciplinary knowledge and its making globally across the diasporic domains of academia, society, industry, and government while addressing the world’s immediate challenges: power, inequities, and sustainability.

Having just completed the REF2021 exercise, the University of Edinburgh community may find several chapters salient to our own questing for excellence within externally applied neoliberal constraints. 

Event info

Refreshments will be served in the Foyer of ECCI (17:00-17:30)

The lecture and discussion will be in the ECCI Conference Room (G.04). (17:30-19:00)

Download the book

The book is open access and available to download at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9780429290633/questing-excellence-academia-knut-s%C3%B8rensen-sharon-traweek