home cooked theory

Related reading #SOI09

With thanks to Tammi and Jen…
The RED Report: The contribution of sessional teachers to higher education, Australian Learning and Teaching Council, 2008
From the introduction, by Professor Rob Castle, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic and International), University of Wollongong:
To maintain for permanent staff the ideal of being teaching and research academics, we have had to rely on [...]

10 things graduate students want

Over the past few months panelists for the SOI conference have been meeting and sharing plans for what they will present in their allotted time at the beginning of each session. The conference format is not the traditional paper-giving mode, but rather an open discussion with the audience following a series of provocations from invited [...]

A requiem for academic blogging

I’m about to post an update in preparation for next week’s SOI conference, but it seemed fitting to mention separately that an article I wrote some time ago about labour politics and academic blogging has just been published in Convergence. Well, fitting in the sense that last week I was in NYC at a conference [...]

In unity

**We urgently need billets for the State of the Industry conference. There has been an amazing response from young interstate scholars wanting to come, and we’ve funded airfares for everyone we could, but some people won’t attend if they can’t get accommodation. Please let me know if you can offer a bed or a couch.**
Taking [...]

Overload

Think your job is bad? Read this. Overload reports on “the role of work-volume escalation and micro-management of academic work patterns in loss of morale and collegiality at UWS.”
Apart from highlighting the inadequacies of workload formulae across every level of academic life, it’s also one of the best reports I’ve read showing the [...]