Paper short abstract:

Social Work education is struggling to decolonize and include the perspectives of students. At the same time, students struggle to formalize their knowledge of current societal developments. How can we include the youth's point of view and create an equal production of knowledge?

Paper long abstract:

Social work as a profession has the mission and aim to strengthen society, increase inclusion and fight power disbalance. As a social work teacher and anthropologist, I study the culture of social work education and the struggle Dutch social work is currently facing when it comes to working on a societal level. Past decades, especially addressing structural problems in society underlying individual problems, have been neglected by Dutch social work. In the education of social work, teachers seem to have the same struggle. Teachers struggle to decolonize education and struggle to include current societal developments. For my Ph.D. research, I study this struggle, while at the same time as a teacher and anthropologist I aim to contribute towards a more just and inclusive social work education. In this lightning talk, I present some of the challenges teachers and students face and propose some new directions. Students are part of this current society and do have the knowledge we need to adapt to future society. At the same time, students seem to struggle to formalize their knowledge and seem to rely on the, sometimes outdated, institutional knowledge. How can we as educators adapt to the current and future society and make use of the future society we have in our classrooms? How can we fight the power balance between the adult point of view versus the youth point of view? The hope and transformation could lay within the possibilities and knowledge youth has, how can we as universities incorporate that knowledge?

Paper short abstract:

This presentation considers how we can bring disability and anti-ableist praxis into discussions on transforming the university. I explore why calls to decolonize and address power imbalances in the university and our own discipline often neglect disability, and reflect on how to change this.

Paper long abstract:

My presentation considers how we can bring disability and anti-ableist praxis into this panel’s discussion on transforming the university. I explore why calls to decolonize and address power imbalances in the university and in our own discipline often neglect disability. I question how this may be related to the ableism deeply ingrained in anthropology (Durban 2021), and investigate how the burgeoning sub-field of the anthropology of disability (Ginsburg and Rapp 2013, 2019) can inspire us to address this oversight. Building on the work of scholars such as Brown and Leigh (2020), Kafer (2013), Minich (2016), Mingus (2017), and Price (2011), I will consider how as teachers we can bring anti-ableist practices into our classrooms. Finally, I will share some reflections related to this topic from my own dissertation research on a national effort to make French universities inclusive of autistic students.

Paper short abstract:

I will analyse how an academic culture of subordinated feelings lead to emotional distress and the institutional practice of marginalizing this distress within a neoliberal idea of profit optimization. I will finally present a peer-supported, supervised approach as a possibility of change.

Paper long abstract:

In my talk, I like to present my analysis of an academic culture of subordinated feelings, that lead to an institutional practice of first marginalizing and then treating the emotional distress of researchers within a neoliberal idea of profit optimization. Already in recent years, various studies show an extreme mental stress load and high amount of emotional work in academic cultures and therefore an increased risk of mental illness for academics. Using autoethnographic vignettes as well as data from my ethnographic fieldwork, I would like to present the often-distressing conditions (before and after the pandemic) in which researchers work currently in German-speaking environments. The focus of my input is on how academics personally and academic institutions in general deal with these work-related emotional burdens and mental health issues. In doing so, the underlying notions of a mentally healthy work in academia will be deconstructed and different attributions, connotations, negotiations, and power imbalances will be revealed. Finally, I would like to present a peer-supported, supervised approach (in the sense of the triangulation: help for self-help/education - peer responsibility - institutional care and support) as a promising option for a future university culture.

Paper short abstract:

'Internationalisation' and 'globalisation' have been buzzwords in the neoliberal restructuring of the academe. This contribution discusses ways of employing scholars' new connectedness to overcome the strangling impacts of hierarchization, austerity and atomisation.

Paper long abstract:

Hierarchisation, austerity and atomisation have turned out to be key features of the neoliberal restructuring of academia across the globe, enlarging the powers of few individuals and structural levels, normalising the large-scale reallocation of budgets from everyday teaching and research to university managements and research foundations, and enforcing scholarly atomisation in the permanent competition for 'excellence' in terms of publication and the acquisition of funds. Results are a widespread monetization of degrees and publishing, mounting cases of power abuse, infringements of academic freedom on different levels, and the production of an increasingly exhausted academic precariat.

Precisely because the academic restructuring has partly been driven on the buzzwords of 'internationalisation' and 'globalization', however, the past 30 years have also generated an unprecedented level of connectedness among scholars. We know each other more and better in terms of relatable experiences and problems, lifestyles, references and expectations than probably ever before in history. And we are more than ever before in numbers.

Based on my work in an academic advocacy network in Germany, as a co-organiser of the Academic Freedom Space (IIAS, Netherlands) and long-term exchanges as an anthropologist with colleagues especially in India and Turkey, this contribution will discuss ways of realizing and applying this strength in terms of practices of solidarity and forms of collaboration but also active challenges of the structures.

Paper short abstract:

70% Of scientists experience sexual intimidation in fieldwork. Silence around this violence normalizes white male discourses and structural inequalities at universities. We explore institutional dynamics through a feminist lens by examining how universities (don't) protect their researchers.

Paper long abstract:

While movements as #MeToo sparked discussion about gender-based violence in academia, the problem of sexualized harassment during fieldwork remains largely invisible in literature and academic debates. Fieldwork requires long-term stays in often unfamiliar areas and close relationships with participants to collect data. While this closeness of intimacy has long been a key benchmark in measuring the quality of the socio-scientific research, early-career researchers acquire little preparation. Such lack of preparation can be dangerous, especially considering an American study reported 70 percent of predominantly women scientists experienced sexual intimidation at fieldwork sites. The current culture of silence around gender-based harassment and violence normalizes the still prevalent image of the ‘heroic fieldworker’: a trope that pays little attention to (gendered) risks of doing fieldwork for female-identifying researchers and members of the BIPoC and/or LGBTQIA+ community. As such, the academic silence surrounding gender-based violence in the field affects individual researchers as well as academic structures. On an individual level, researchers might experience feelings of failure, shame, guilt, stress and loneliness when faced with gender-based harassment or violence in the field. On a structural level, prevalent discourses of fieldwork, its risks and the role of the fieldworker shapes our questions, methodology, data collection and knowledge production. With this presentation, we critically examine this academic silence and specifically the role of universities in reinforcing it through unequal knowledge production, thereby failing to protect their researchers in the field.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores how interdisciplinary collaboration requires and builds the tenacity and humility to build engaged academic careers, especially during doctoral and other early career stages, and consider what structures could help facilitate such experiences in universities of the future.

Paper long abstract:

If academia is to usefully tackle the societal challenges we face, the structures that facilitate connection across disciplines for early career researchers is a key site of analysis and action.

The process of writing a PhD often galvanizes disciplinary and associated ideological silos, as earning and maintaining validity within one’s chosen field can appear (due, for example, to institutional and linguistic gatekeeping, intentional or otherwise). Early career researchers are often incentivised to continue in these silos until they are specialist enough, and validated as such by the (often White, masculine and Euro-centric) structures of academia, before building with those from other disciplines. The resistance of these invisible delineations can feel like a lonely, unchartered experience to Early Career Researchers.

Our proposed presentation explores our six years of experience collaborating on projects around representational justice and wellbeing, alongside our PhDs in Social Work (Jenny), and Anthropology (Sarah-Jane) departments. Our experience researching representation in children’s media and play experiences and emotional wellbeing in the classroom has been greatly enriched through our complementary disciplinary perspectives, alongside our divergent wider life experiences.

While our research has been validated, funded and supported in different ways, we have also come up against myriad blockages that discourage the collaborative engagements that could build up the confidence and skills to enable successful interdisciplinary work. Holding onto and nourishing the imperatives for our collaborative projects has required and built a tenacious hope for what these projects and wider academic-activist practices can do when collaboration flourishes from the start.