Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the challenge of being a vulnerable observer (Behar 1997) when these same vulnerabilities may prevent us entering the field. It will explore the nature of hopes, dreams and longing against a back-drop of business model-led academia.

Paper long abstract:

It has been almost 30 years now since Ruth Behar asked anthropologists to strip away those apparently solid pretexts associated with being an objective observer. Instead, she encouraged us to acknowledge, and then engage critically with, our own subjectivity, emotions, experiences, positionality and so on – a process that requires us to reveal something of our vulnerable selves. But what are the implications when it is some of these same vulnerabilities that may reduce opportunity to access to the field? This paper will explore these challenges through the lens of my own and others’ academic and personal experience – how do our hopes, dreams and longing stack up against a back-drop of business model-led academia? Through this focus I will consider ways in which our vulnerabilities provoke questions relating to the shifting nature of the academy – or more appropriately, the imagined shifting nature of the academy.