12 November, 5-7 pm CET
Employment in academia – anthropology departments included – is increasingly shaped by the marketization of higher education and the resulting changes in academic labour under late-stage capitalism. Whilst academic work historically involved both research and teaching activities, the reduction in research funding, and fluctuations in public funding in general – as well as in student numbers – have contributed to an increase in the academic division of labour. Scholars on research contracts, often tied to external grants, tend to be in insecure, fixed-term employment, while much of the teaching is being done by hourly paid, junior scholars or by those on teaching-only contracts, with limited options to engage in the research needed for career progress.
Despite the common trend of increasing precarity in academic work, the specific forms that this takes vary. In some parts of Europe, contracts may be permanent but with a low guaranteed salary, making academics compete for external funding to ‘top up’ their income or hold more than one contract at any one time. The political shift to the right in many countries has led to attacks on academic freedoms, and cuts to research budgets have resulted in widespread redundancies or even the closure of whole departments, especially in the humanities and social sciences, further deepening the precarity of academic work.
In this webinar, we will engage in discussions of experiences of academic precarity in different geographical and institutional contexts, and at different career stages, in conversation with scholars who have researched the issue.