NOG Research Day: ‘Living a Feminist Life in Neoliberal Academia’

The title of this year’s NOG Research Day takes its inspiration from Sara Ahmed’s monograph Living a Feminist Life. Ahmed reminds us that as feminists, we experience the devastating effects of racism, genderism, ableism, ageism, homo- and transphobia on a daily basis. In addition to these challenges, we are faced with the ongoing neoliberalization of academia, with its emphasis on the marketing of knowledge, and on surveillance and control. This market model of academia has been incorporated into the universities, for example through the emphasis on ‘earning power’, the bureaucratization of student-teacher relationships, and an increasingly internalized ‘audit culture’ that seeks to reduce everyone and everything to quantifiable data or measurable ‘output’. Therefore, the main question of the NOG Research Day is: “Is it still possible to lead a feminist life in neoliberal academia?”