Rosalind Gill, City University London 

Academic Labouring in the Neoliberal University

6.30pm-8pm Tuesday, 26 November 2013

The Old Courtroom, 118 Church Street, Brighton, BN1 1UD


Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to locate academics within the sights of critical labour studies, and, in particular, the contemporary interest in cultural workers. Despite a growing literature about – and in response to – the transformation of the University there have been few attempts to study academics as workers. This paper argues that there are a number of parallels between academic work and the much more well-documented experiences of work in the cultural and creative industries. The paper examines the increasing experience of precariousness among academics, the intensification and extensification of work, and the new modes of surveillance in the academy and their affective impacts. The aim of the article is to build on the critical lexicon of studies of cultural labour in order to think about academic work as labour and to generate new ways of thinking about power, privilege and exploitation. It argues for the need for a psychosocial perspective that can understand the new labouring subjectivities in academia.
 
Speaker:
Rosalind Gill completed her PhD in Social Psychology at the Discourse and Rhetoric Group (DARG), Loughborough University in 1991, and has since worked across a number of disciplines including Sociology, Gender Studies and Media and Communications. She has been based at Goldsmiths College, the Open University and spent 10 years at the LSE before moving to King’s College London to take up a position as Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis in 2010.