Call for papers:
Gender in/and the neoliberal university
RINGS small conference and General Assembly 2015
Prague, Czech Republic, 5 – 6 November 2015
This is a closed call for RINGS members only. Following the Orebro meeting conclusion that each member organization should invite one other organization to become a new RINGS member from a more marginalized location, please send this call to one other organization of your choice.
Goal of the small conference:
1) get acquainted with the state of neoliberal reforms adoption in academia in various countries;
2) discuss your own research with organizations that cover similar research topics and network for possible future research collaboration.
The small conference will have the following format:
1) Short national presentations about the implementation of neoliberal reforms and practices of New Public Management in academia (max 10 minutes per country). For this presentation organizations from one country should create a joint presentation or choose who will be responsible for it. The local organizers will notify individual institutions of which other organizations from their country will attend the event after the registration is closed on 15 May 2015.
2) Thematic (probably parallel) sessions about research topics related to the main theme of the event (max 15 minutes per organization). Please send an abstract for this part. Each organization will submit its own abstract with a description of its research related to the theme Gender in/and the neo-liberal university. The Scientific Committee will create thematic blocks/sessions.
If you do not do research in this field but would like to attend the conference, please prepare just a short presentation about the situation in your country for the first session of short national presentations and let us know about it.
The neoliberal university has increasingly received research attention globally. This line of research strives to address policies and practices as well as their effects in the fast changing landscape of higher education and academia more broadly. Research explores if practices and effects of the neoliberal turn in academia will differ if a gender and intersectional perspective is adopted, if geopolitical and temporal location is considered and if we focus on the individual or institutional dimensions. The conference will therefore concentrate on the specificities of the neoliberal university in different parts of the world. What is the interpretation of the neoliberal university in various locations? And particularly, which topics are covered by the notion gendered in different contexts?
The conference will address issues such as the gender dimension of the ways in which academia is funded, the changing ways of assessing academic work, the growing precarity of academic positions as well as the massification of higher education. At the same time, focusing on these issues globally should allow us to see if and how these processes are gendered in various geographical contexts and with what consequences, both negative and positive.
We propose the following topics for the conference while we encourage you to present on any other area you deem relevant to the conference focus.
o Gender equality policies in neoliberal university: What opportunities and obstacles does the shift toward neoliberal university present for promotion of gender equality in academia?
o Gender and feminist studies in neoliberal university: What impacts do current shifts in terms of research and teaching assessment and funding for universities and research organizations have in terms of curricula, research questions etc. in gender and feminist studies?
o Governance, teaching and research assessment systems and their impacts: What are the consequences of assessment systems on knowledge making and student-teacher relations? What is the geopolitics behind decisions on what counts as excellent science? What is the excellence about? What is the relationship among excellence and quality? What is the impact of the notion of excellence on the power/relevance of various scientific disciplines? How are the decisions and their impact gendered? How is education impacted? What are the other important axes of dis/advantage involved?
o Research/teaching careers, precarity, mobility and gender: What forms do precarity and casualization take in the higher education and research sectors? In what ways are processes of precarization gendered? Who are the beneficiaries/harmed? Is gender the driving distinction? How do precarity and casualization of academic employment impact on the content of knowledge/the learning process/academic citizenship? What forms of research/teaching career paths the neoliberal university system produces? What is considered the successful career path? What impact has neoliberal university system on researchers/teachers mobility (horizontal-inter/national and vertical)? How is the mobility gendered? What are the driving factors of mobility decisions?
o Massification of higher education: What are the consequences of massification on the make-up of teachers/students in terms of various axes of dis/advantage? What are the goals of the education in the frame of neoliberal university? How is the resulting learning/teaching experience gendered? How the massification of higher education affects the academia as a working environment and producer of the knowledge from gender perspective?
Please submit an abstract of max. 500 words describing your research topics and projects related to the conference theme plus references.
Technical information:
o Host organization: National Contact Centre for Gender & Science (NKC), Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
o Venue: Academic Conference Centre (http://www.akc-avcr.cz/), Husova 4a, Prague, Czech Republic (participants who cannot come to Prague can use video conference; coffee breaks are free of charge).
o Fee: There is no registration fee; if you plan to attend the conference dinner, the cost will be EUR 20.
o Accommodation and travel costs: Each participant needs to cover his/her accommodation and travel costs. NKC may assist with accommodation if requested and will try to arrange for reduced prices.
o Deadline for abstract submission and registration: 15 May 2015
o Please register your abstract here http://goo.gl/kdqioz.
Tentative agenda:
o Thursday 5 November 2015:
- conference - morning and afternoon sessions – presentations by RINGS members
- short national presentations (10 min each country)
- thematic sessions
- dinner (please, fill in the registration form if you wish to attend; the price is approx. EUR 20 per person)
o Friday 6 November 2015: morning – General Assembly
Contact person:
Katerina Cidlinska National Contact Centre for Gender & Science Institute of Sociology Czech Academy of Sciences Jilska 1 11000 Prague 1 Czech Republic Tel: 004202 210 310 322
Email: katerina.cidlinska@soc.cas.cz
https://ringsgender.org/sites/ringsgender.org/files/2023-11/abstracts_rings_2015_revisited_final.pdf