Academic Autonomy Beyond the Nation-State

Baier, Christian; Gengnagel, Vincent

doi:10.1007/s11614-018-0297-7

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…7. In this sense, we follow the approach applied by Baier and Gengnagel (2018) which combined extracted topics, qualitative content analysis, and principal component analysis. Research quality that equates to attainable levels of international excellence in a majority of subareas of activity and attainable levels of national excellence in all others.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

All power to the reviewers: British sociology under two-level supervision of the Research Excellence Framework

Wieczorek

Münch

Schubert

2022

Social Science Information

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Our study investigates the impact of the British Research Assessment Exercise in 2008 and Research Excellence Framework in 2014 on the diversity and topic structure of UK sociology departments from the perspective of habitus-field theory. Empirically, we train a Latent Dirichlet allocation on 819,673 abstracts stemming from the journals in which British sociologists submitted at least one paper in the Research Assessment Exercise 2008 or Research Excellence Framework 2014. We then employ the trained model on the 4822 papers submitted in the Research Assessment Exercise 2008 and 2014. Finally, we apply multiple factor analysis to project the properties of the departments in the topic space. Our topic model uncovers generally low levels of research diversity. Topics with global reach related to political elites, demography, knowledge transfer, and climate change are on the rise, whereas locally constrained research topics on social problems and different dimensions of social inequality get less prevalent. Additionally, some of the declining topics are getting more aligned to elite institutions and high ratings. Furthermore, we see that the associations between different funding bodies, topics covered, and specialties among sociology departments changed from 2008 to 2014. Nonetheless, topics aligned to different societal elites are found to be associated with high Research Assessment Exercise/Research Excellence Framework scores, while social engineering topics, postcolonial- and cultural-related, as well as more abstract topics are related to lower Research Assessment Exercise/Research Excellence Framework scores.

show abstract

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 7. In this sense, we follow the approach applied by Baier and Gengnagel (2018) which combined extracted topics, qualitative content analysis, and principal component analysis. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

All power to the reviewers: British sociology under two-level supervision of the Research Excellence Framework

Wieczorek

Münch

Schubert

2022

Social Science Information

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For measurement of other concepts than frames, see for instance, the study of issue homophily by Schmidt-Petri et al (2018), word polysemy in DiMaggio et al 2013, and literary themes in Jockers and Mimno (2013). 21 See also Light and Cunningham (2016), Miller (2013), Baier and Gengnagel (2018), and Roose et al (2018) for other examples of topic modeling which accord with topic instrumentalism. correct model which properly captures the underlying thematic structure of the texts.…”

Section: Topic Realism and Topic Instrumentalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanistic interpretation and machine learning

Pääkkönen

Ylikoski

2020

Synthese

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper investigates how unsupervised machine learning methods might make hermeneutic interpretive text analysis more objective in the social sciences. Through a close examination of the uses of topic modeling—a popular unsupervised approach in the social sciences—it argues that the primary way in which unsupervised learning supports interpretation is by allowing interpreters to discover unanticipated information in larger and more diverse corpora and by improving the transparency of the interpretive process. This view highlights that unsupervised modeling does not eliminate the researchers’ judgments from the process of producing evidence for social scientific theories. The paper shows this by distinguishing between two prevalent attitudes toward topic modeling, i.e., topic realism and topic instrumentalism. Under neither can modeling provide social scientific evidence without the researchers’ interpretive engagement with the original text materials. Thus the unsupervised text analysis cannot improve the objectivity of interpretation by alleviating the problem of underdetermination in interpretive debate. The paper argues that the sense in which unsupervised methods can improve objectivity is by providing researchers with the resources to justify to others that their interpretations are correct. This kind of objectivity seeks to reduce suspicions in collective debate that interpretations are the products of arbitrary processes influenced by the researchers’ idiosyncratic decisions or starting points. The paper discusses this view in relation to alternative approaches to formalizing interpretation and identifies several limitations on what unsupervised learning can be expected to achieve in terms of supporting interpretive work.

show abstract

“…The paper's sample consists of 60 intra-EU mobile doctoral candidates from the social sciences and humanities (SSH). This disciplinary field is well-suited for our analysis since an increasing cross-border mobility has been observed while national traditions and languages still matter (Baier & Gengnagel, 2018). We consider France and the Netherlands-both EU member states with a relatively high number of doctoral candidates from Germany 1 -as interesting contrasting cases for a comparative view.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Places and mechanisms of belonging and exclusion: Intra‐EU academic migration in a comparative perspective

Schäfer,

Schittenhelm,

El Dali

2023

Population Space and Place

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Intra‐EU doctoral migrants are doubly privileged: as EU citizens they enjoy free movement rights and as academics their intra‐EU mobility is promoted by the EU's measures to establish a European Research Area. This paper takes a closer look at these favourable conditions by examining intra‐EU mobile doctoral academics in different places. To understand the experiences of migrating into academic spheres abroad and being on the threshold of entering the academic workforce, our theoretical approach brings together theories of distinctive practices resulting in exclusion and theories of belonging. We consider the knowledge resources, including language abilities, that are required for the doctoral migrants' inclusion in the academic workforce abroad by using a comparative view on places. Our empirical analysis focuses on graduates in the social sciences and humanities who moved from Germany to France or the Netherlands during their educational trajectories. Suggesting a place‐based comparative approach, we contribute to the debates about barriers to intra‐EU academic migration. We explain (i) place‐specific obstacles due to differing understandings of ‘appropriate’ knowledge and language abilities in higher education that affect social and academic life and (ii) how these barriers result in the doctoral migrants being in‐ and excluded in academic environments abroad.

show abstract

Academic Autonomy Beyond the Nation-State

Cited by 11 publications

References 27 publications

All power to the reviewers: British sociology under two-level supervision of the Research Excellence Framework

All power to the reviewers: British sociology under two-level supervision of the Research Excellence Framework

Humanistic interpretation and machine learning

Places and mechanisms of belonging and exclusion: Intra‐EU academic migration in a comparative perspective

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About