{"id":52374,"date":"2020-05-21T00:07:39","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T07:07:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=52374"},"modified":"2020-05-21T00:07:39","modified_gmt":"2020-05-21T07:07:39","slug":"the-world-cannot-afford-any-more-global-academic-jamborees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/the-world-cannot-afford-any-more-global-academic-jamborees\/","title":{"rendered":"The world cannot afford any more global academic jamborees"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The coronavirus pandemic has raised major questions about our collective economic and social futures \u2013 in academia as much as in the wider population.<\/p>\n

These questions don\u2019t just revolve around international students. The cancellation of many international academic conferences highlights problematic assumptions about research distribution and exchange \u2013 and suggests how the process could be made more equitable. Long-distance travel leads to collateral intellectual and ecological damage, which can no longer be ignored. Indeed, re-evaluation is inevitable given the recent reports suggesting that the aviation industry will be changed forever by the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Since 1945, Western academia has relied on two models. The first was patriarchal and class-bound: \u201cinfluential\u201d and \u201cesteemed\u201d senior academics promoted predominantly white male favourites within existing knowledge networks. The second is the \u201cconference model\u201d, in which usually Western-based scholars have the opportunity to showcase their work at numerous national and international meetings.<\/p>\n

The model\u2019s stealthy emergence and growth has largely been a function of a system in which individual scholars are expected to market themselves relentlessly in pursuit of \u201cstar\u201d status. But this model of knowledge production relies on economic surpluses to fund all the globetrotting. And, apart from the ecological degradation, it is riven by socio-economic, class, race and gender divides.<\/p>\n

It depends on the hypermobility of scholars in the Global North. The ease with which this relatively small group of global scholars can attend conferences in the Global South contrasts starkly with the experience of scholars based in the Global South travelling in the other direction for research, teaching work or conferences. While a few are able to gain entry to the international academic circuit \u2013 to ensure \u201creciprocity\u201d in the research process \u2013 this involves going through a gruelling, humiliating and often unsuccessful visa application process.<\/p>\n

Junior scholars across the world also lose out. Research grants bring some scholars relief from teaching and administration, but their obligations are often covered by young academics on insecure contracts, with no guarantee of future work. Despite the fine research to which such \u201cbuyouts\u201d have led to, all those \u201cstar researchers\u201d who have benefited from it are implicated in the intensifying inequalities.<\/p>\n

With hypermobility stalled, this model is in crisis. Yet better models can grow. For instance, with the support of the British Academy, the\u00a0African Studies Association of the UK<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 whose annual conference, due to have been held at\u00a0Cardiff University\u00a0in September, has been cancelled \u2013 has spearheaded a\u00a0Writing Workshop programme<\/a>\u00a0since 2009. This initiative responded to an ongoing series of discussions, facilitated by the Association of Commonwealth Universities and the British Academy, around Africa-UK research collaborations. The writing workshops help to build African research networks and provide mentoring for early and mid-career scholars, in cooperation with senior scholars from institutions across Africa.<\/p>\n

Scholarly associations should expand this kind of project as a core intellectual activity. They could also use the time released from organising vast conferences to embark on some urgent tasks: fighting the attempts at retrenchment that the pandemic will inevitably lead\u00a0to; protecting the rights of female, black and ethnic minority scholars in the West, who will be disproportionately affected; and building enduring and genuinely collaborative links with scholars in the South.<\/p>\n

This pandemic should make us look hard at our paradigms of knowledge production and call into question how structures in the university sector have intensified global inequalities. Other models can emerge, building on local needs and ideas in the South, alongside less hierarchical models of funding and research in the North.<\/p>\n

Academics who have grown up with conferences will find it hard to imagine life without them. However, the world cannot afford any more global academic jamborees.<\/p>\n

Author Bios: <\/strong>Ambreena Manji is professor of land law and development at Cardiff University\u00a0and president of the African Studies Association of the UK. Carli Coetzee is a research associate at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and editor of the\u00a0Journal of African Cultural Studies. Ola Uduku is a professor at the Manchester School of Architecture and vice-president of the ASAUK. Toby Green is senior lecturer in lusophone African history and culture at\u00a0King\u2019s College London\u00a0and won the British Academy\u00a0Nayef Al-Rohdan Prize\u00a0for Global Cultural Understanding.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The coronavirus pandemic has raised major questions about our collective economic and social futures \u2013 in academia as much as in the wider population. These questions don\u2019t just revolve around international students. The cancellation of many international academic conferences highlights problematic assumptions about research distribution and exchange \u2013 and suggests how the process could be […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":52375,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[351709],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-52374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-conference-model"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe world cannot afford any more global academic jamborees - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/the-world-cannot-afford-any-more-global-academic-jamborees\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The world cannot afford any more global academic jamborees - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The coronavirus pandemic has raised major questions about our collective economic and social futures \u2013 in academia as much as in the wider population. 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