Critical University Studies: Get out of the Library and Into the Commons!

• In Event: Resisting and Reframing: Interrogating Qualitative Methods and Approaches

Abstract

Even the harshest critics and most prominent scholars cannot easily escape our defunded, highly individualized, hyper-competitive, and perversely incentivized moment. How does all this shape, reinvent, and construct life for faculty when the institutions in which “…we function serve as both harbor and tyrant?” (Lather, 2018, p. 114). Choosing what matters over what counts in spite of the audited, managerial academy is a predicament faced by many scholars who adopt a relational stance to knowledge creation and engagement; such approaches include research designs that are participatory, action-oriented, Indigenous, community-centred, and more. This paper examines how audit culture, as neoliberalism and New Public Management are operationalized, disproportionately disenfranchises knowledge-making that is collaborative, innovative, Indigenous, participatory, interdisciplinary, or engaged with public concerns.

Author

• Marc T. Spooner, University of Regina
  Presenting Author