Giving an account of oneself: The PBRF and the neoliberal university

Cupples, Julie; Pawson, Eric

doi:10.1111/j.1745-7939.2012.01217.x

Cited by 46 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Framed by increasingly individualising neoliberal tendencies within Aotearoa New Zealand universities (Cupples and Pawson ), we viewed this unexpected erotic positioning by participants as a personal failure that meant we were not good researchers. Leaving the field, we all thought we had done something wrong.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Desiring more: complicating understandings of sexuality in research processes

Diprose

Thomas

Rushton

2013

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Reflexively considering one's position when undertaking research has become commonplace in geographic research and writing. This phenomenon is linked to the increasingly prevalent view that research is a co-constituted process that involves the participant and researcher both constructing meaning. Yet, curiously, there has been relatively limited discussion around the role that sexual experiences play in the research process. In this article we draw on three experiences to illustrate the complex ways in which unwanted sexual encounters with research participants can affect the research process. Through these stories we show how sexual encounters shaped the research process, unsettled the way we understood and performed our own gendered sexuality, and challenged our understandings of what it means to be 'good researchers' . We aim to initiate a wider discussion around how we can best prepare emerging researchers for, and support in the wake of, unexpected encounters of desire in the field.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Desiring more: complicating understandings of sexuality in research processes

Diprose

Thomas

Rushton

2013

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“…). We may thereby construct ‘alternative ways of being in the academy’ and contribute to the development of anti‐neoliberal forms of knowledge production (Cupples and Pawson , 18; Mountz et al . 2015).…”

Section: Feminist Ethics Of Care Participatory Praxis and ‘Impact’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Achieving and evidencing research ‘impact’? Tensions and dilemmas from an ethic of care perspective

Evans

2016

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While many academics are sceptical about the 'impact agenda', it may offer the potential to re-value feminist and participatory approaches to the co-production of knowledge. Drawing on my experiences of developing a UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) impact case study based on research on young caregiving in the UK, Tanzania and Uganda, I explore the dilemmas and tensions of balancing an ethic of care and participatory praxis with research management demands to evidence 'impact' in the neoliberal academy. The participatory dissemination process enabled young people to identify their support needs, which translated into policy and practice recommendations and in turn, produced 'impact'. It also revealed a paradox of action-oriented research: this approach may bring greater emotional investment of the participants in the project in potentially negative as well as positive ways, resulting in disenchantment that the research did not lead to tangible outcomes at local level. Participatory praxis may also pose ethical dilemmas for researchers who have responsibilities to care for both 'proximate' and 'distant' others. The 'more than research' relationship I developed with practitioners was motivated by my ethic of care rather than by the demands of the audit culture. Furthermore, my research and the impacts cited emerged slowly and incrementally from a series of small grants in an unplanned, serendipitous way at different scales, which may be difficult to fit within institutional audits of 'impact'. Given the growing pressures on academics, it seems ever more important to embody an ethic of care in university settings, as well as in the 'field'. We need to join the call for 'slow scholarship' and advocate a re-valuing of feminist and participatory action research approaches, which may have most impact at local level, in order to achieve meaningful shifts in the impact agenda and more broadly, the academy.

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“…There is also a need, however, to look at ways that resistance at all levels serves to challenge and shift discourses and practices within UK higher education. As discussed above, there is evidence with the research literature that not all academic experience these mechanisms as totalising and that forms of resistance are evidence (Cupples & Pawson, 2012) in relation to how individuals operate within particular institutional contexts. This evidence has primarily been given by conducting qualitative research with academics, predominantly through in-depth interviews.…”

Section: Theorising the Practice Of Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The intensification of academic working environments has also been emphasised and the possibility of research activities being valued over all other forms of academic work (Sikes, 2006). However, more recent literature has also raised the question of the potential positive influence as individual academic re-appropriate these processes as a way of re-invigorating academic subjectivities (Cupples & Pawson, 2012).…”

Section: Quality Assurance Of Learning and Teaching In Higher Educatimentioning

confidence: 99%

Academic resistance to quality assurance processes in higher education in the UK

Lucas

2014

Policy and Society

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General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. AbstractThe focus of this article is on academic resistance to quality assurance processes that have developed within UK higher education in relation to both research and teaching. These quality processes are often seen as forms of disciplining technologies (Blackmore, 2009) and are arguably an important part of the means by which new public management has been introduced to the sector. They have been perceived to monitor and control academic work in relation to teaching and research within UK universities over the last 20 years or so. However, following the work of Thomas & Davies (2005), this article attempts to look at the complexity of academic reactions to these processes and the ways in which academics situated within particular contexts might challenge and resist the discourses and subject positions that are being offered to them. Following the work of Graham (2011) and Hyatt (2013) a Foucauldian informed critical discourse analysis is used to examine two critical case studies of resistance to both the quality assurance processes for teaching and the assessment and evaluation of university research work.

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Giving an account of oneself: The PBRF and the neoliberal university

Cited by 46 publications

References 38 publications

Desiring more: complicating understandings of sexuality in research processes

Desiring more: complicating understandings of sexuality in research processes

Achieving and evidencing research ‘impact’? Tensions and dilemmas from an ethic of care perspective

Academic resistance to quality assurance processes in higher education in the UK

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