CfP: "Work and Career in Neoliberal Academia" (MCCT 2025)

Call for Papers

Deadline for submission of abstracts is 07 January 2025 

The MCCT is an annual interdisciplinary conference that provides a forum for emergent critical scholarship, broadly construed. The conference is free for all to attend and follows a non-hierarchical model that seeks to foster opportunities for intellectual critical exchanges where all are treated equally regardless of affiliation or seniority. There are no plenaries, and the conference is envisaged as a space for those who share intellectual approaches and interests but who may find themselves at the margins of their academic department or discipline. The MCCT is an offshoot of the London Conference in Critical Thought (LCCT) and shares its approach and ethos.

The intellectual content and thematic foci of the conference has been determined by the streams outlined in the full CFP. Please look through the streams to see where your presentation submission will best fit. The deadline for presentation submissions is 7 January 2025. Abstracts are to be submitted as a Word document and should not exceed 500 words. Please send your proposal to midlandscritical@gmail.com. 

This year's MCCT features 16 streams, outlined in full in this document. One of the streams focuses on "Work and Career in Neoliberal Academia: Systemic Pressures and Inequities", organised by Ranier Abengana (University College Dublin), Anastasia Fjodorova (University of Sterling), Ricky Gee (Nottingham Trent University), and Ylva Gustafsson (Åbo Akademi University)

"Work and Career in Neoliberal Academia: Systemic Pressures and Inequities"

Stream Description and CFP

Amidst the drastic changes in working conditions brought about by COVID-19, many workers have reevaluated their  relationship with work. Academic workers were not insulated from this, with many realising that the problems in and  with their work stem not from the pandemic, but from an ethos that had long been present. Fleming (2021) provides  a detailed analysis of how the influence of neoliberalism has had a negative impact upon the academy pushing  forward a commercialisation and managerialist agenda at the expense of student and academic ‘well-being’. Recent  developments within the sector provide further empirical evidence of this negative impact. Such developments have  seen the closure of many courses, redundancies of staff, students having to work longer hours to afford to live, and  many managers asked to become ‘slash-cutters’ to address budget shortfalls.

With the proliferation of audit culture, uncritical reliance on quantifiable metrics, and encouragement of hyper productivity, new and even more pernicious forms of control define the ‘pulse of modern academia’ (Vostal, 2016;  Readings, 1996). Passion, once regarded as an intrinsic motivator for intellectual pursuits, has now become  commodified, leaving many academics feeling exploited, overworked, and alienated. Despite this, academic labour  is often viewed as a ‘labour of love’ (Hall 2021), leading to a tendency to embrace, or even valorise, overwork and  exhaustion as a demonstration of one’s commitment to their vocation. Staff are held responsible ‘for their own  emotional and intellectual well-being’ (Poutanen 2023), with increasing levels of stress and anxiety seen as individual  failings rather than symptoms of structural problems. Frequently, proposed solutions to worsening mental health  among academic staff—instead of acknowledging structural issues—are also individual in nature, with universities  paying lip service to mental health awareness through, for example, the organising of workshops for staff on  ‘managing stress’ and ‘developing resilience’.

The impression of universities as beacons of knowledge, understanding and justice is reflected in claims that working  life at universities, as well as career advancement, is strictly based on academic merits. Policies for publishing articles,  seeking funding for research, and employing staff are often described as being highly rigorous and based on strict  evaluation criteria. Often, however, there are deeply ingrained structural patterns of inequality that are kept up by  the illusion of rigorous meritocratic processes. The meritocratic system becomes part of how inequality is accepted  and covered up at universities. While the myth of hard work and the rhetoric of meritocracy are used to entice  academics, they often serve to keep individuals ‘playing the game’, striving for success that remains ever elusive,  while the system itself fails to address the systemic racialised, gendered, and class-based inequalities that shape  avenues towards equitable career advancement as well as personal and professional fulfilment. Those who fall by the  wayside, are either forced to quit (Flanagan and Wright, eds., 2022), if not be content with quick fixes that reflect  nothing but the privatisation of stress and the outsourcing of its management to individuals (Fisher, 2009; Purser,  2019).

This stream seeks to explore theoretically informed staff and student experiences of work and career in this shrinking  sector, exploring how neoliberal policies create a suffocating and individualist environment based on metric  outcomes and over emphasis on financial savings. We thus invite proposals that seek to address these and other  related issues. Considering these challenges, we likewise intend to question what critiques of work can reveal about  the effectiveness of critiques of academia itself. Can a critical examination of academia truly offer meaningful change  when it grapples with the very structures it aims to reform?

We welcome submissions that explore a wide variety of themes and questions, including but not limited to:

• How do we conceptualise 'work' and 'career' within and beyond the neoliberal university?
• How can we address the structural injustices allowing for uncompensated work within the academy (e.g.,  reproductive labour)? What are the different intersectional (race, class, gender, disability, etc.,) issues that affect  working conditions and create just or unjust working environments?  
• What are the arguments for and against the refusal and resistance of work and working practices?
• Reorganisation or abolition of work and traditional notions of academic career?
• How can various forms of resignations and work-related protests and resistance be operative within the academy? 
• How might AI impact upon conceptions, experiences and enactment of work and career?

For those interested, please send a 500-word abstract to midlandscritical@gmail.com on or before 07 January 2025, with the stream title indicated in the subject line.

For inquiries related to this stream, please feel free to drop us an email:

• Ranier Abengana
• Anastasia Fjodorova
• Ricky Gee
• Ylva Gustafsson

For general and conference-related queries, please email: midlandscritical@gmail.com