Academic Profession

The regime of excellence – manifested in journal rankings and research assessments – is coming to increasing prominence in the contemporary university. Critical scholars have responded to the encroaching ideology of excellence in various ways: while some seek to defend such measures of academic performance on the grounds that they provide accountability and transparency in place of elitism and privilege, others have criticized their impact on scholarship. The present paper contributes to the debate by exploring the relationship between the regime of excellence and critical management studies (CMS). Drawing on extensive interviews with CMS professors, we show how the regime of excellence is eroding the ethos of critical scholars. As a result, decisions about what to research and where to publish are increasingly being made according to the diktats of research assessments, journal rankings and managing editors of premier outlets. This suggests that CMS researchers may find themselves inadvertently aiding and abetting the rise of managerialism in the university sector, which raises troubling questions about the future of critical scholarship in the business school.

Brazilian higher education is a known case of extreme diversity with 89% of its more than 2,300 institutions being private. Institutions range from small, family-owned, professionally oriented schools to huge research universities with budgets of more than two billion dollars a year. This chapter analyses how this diverse institutional environment creates differences in opportunity and expectations among academics, and how this, in turn, is relevant to understanding variations in the general satisfaction academics hold toward different aspects of their professional life. The analysis found that in understanding the way individuals assess their satisfaction with the academic career the subjective congruence between the academic’s professional goals and the institutional mission is a central issue. Thus individuals that lean toward research and work in a teaching oriented institution tend to be less satisfied with their general work conditions. The same holds true for individuals that value teaching and work in a more competitive environment like the one to be found in a research oriented university. Other relevant dimension explored in the paper is the impact of the institution’s general entrepreneurial orientation (as perceived by the academic) and the job satisfaction. Institutions with a more entrepreneurial orientation tend to create a more satisfying environment for academics, regardless the more objective conditions of employment (like stability, teaching load, etc) it offers.

Why do we go to academic conferences? What do we hope to gain? Sometimes colleagues tell me that they have given up on conferences altogether because they “just don’t have the time.” In this post I argue for the benefits of conferences and suggest ways to present and attend conferences to help you work towards your goals not against them. I conclude with some resources for giving better presentations.

"Si les activités des enseignants-chercheurs se sont largement diversifiées (Rey, 2005), la carrière universitaire reste partout profondément marquée par l'activité de recherche et sous l'influence des différents départements (Musselin, 2008).
Malgré un intérêt croissant pour une formation initiale ou un accompagnement spécifique en début de carrière (Luzeckyj & Badger, 2008), cette diversification des activités impacte variablement les modalités de recrutement et de titularisation.
En France, les mesures prises depuis 20 ans sont emblématiques des difficultés des pouvoirs publics à appréhender de façon intégrée l’entrée dans la carrière. L'introduction récente d'une modulation des services ainsi que la délégation de la formation des doctorants aux établissements d’enseignement supérieur n'échappent pas à cet écueil.
Ailleurs, en particulier dans les pays anglo-saxons, certaines initiatives sont plus avancées. Les travaux issus du SoTL plaident depuis près de 25 ans pour une meilleure articulation entre la recherche et l'enseignement (Hutchings et al., 2011). Parti des États-Unis dans les années 1990, le SoTL influence aujourd'hui les politiques nationales dans un grand nombre de pays (Endrizzi, 2011).
Dans cette contribution, nous nous proposons d'explorer les tensions propres au métier d'enseignant-chercheur, en particulier lors de la phase de recrutement, puis de faire un bref rappel des mesures susceptibles de soutenir l'entrée dans le métier en France. Nous examinons enfin quelques dispositifs mis en œuvre dans le sillage du SoTL, en particulier la formation obligatoire des néo-universitaires déployée récemment au Royaume Uni (Trowler & Bamber, 2005 ; Smith, 2011)."

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Explores the conflicts and challenges facing older and younger feminist scholars.

Composed of essays from academic women at various professional stages-from established scholars to junior professors to graduate students-this collection illuminates the debates of feminist histories and future legacies, while analyzing the challenges of “passing the torch.”
Contributors: Diane Elam, Elizabeth Francis, Linda Frost, Jane Gallop, Dana Heller, Jane Kalbfleisch, Jeanne Marecek, Nancy K. Miller, Mona Narain, Angela M. S. Nelson, Judith Newton, Rebecca Dakin Quinn, Gita Rajan, Judith Roof, Theresa Ann Sears, Ruthe Thompson, Michele Wallace, Barbara A. White, and Lynda Zwinger.
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""What does a move from a village in the West African rain forest to a West African community in a European city entail? What about a shift from a Greek sheep-herding community to working with evictees and housing activists in Rome and Bangkok? In The Restless Anthropologist, Alma Gottlieb brings together eight eminent scholars to recount the riveting personal and intellectual dynamics of uprooting one’s life—and decades of work—to embrace a new fieldsite.

Addressing questions of life-course, research methods, institutional support, professional networks, ethnographic models, and disciplinary paradigm shifts, the contributing writers of The Restless Anthropologist discuss the ways their earlier and later projects compare on both scholarly and personal levels, describing the circumstances of their choices and the motivations that have emboldened them to proceed, to become novices all over again. In doing so, they question some of the central expectations of their discipline, reimagining the space of the anthropological fieldsite at the heart of their scholarly lives.""