Stress fractures: one year on

One year on from her important piece about academic stress, mental health and audit culture, Liz Morrish reflects on the reactions to the piece. Several other interesting pieces on her blog Academic Irregularities, of which Resist, Insist, Persist is a recent one worth reading.

lizmorrish's avatarAcademic Irregularities

It is about a year ago since I posted The Kindness of Strangers. It quickly found a lot of readers worldwide. As it travelled, the Times Higher asked my permission to republish it on their blog where it trended for several days. I was obliged to take it down by my former employer, and they forbade me to write any more on stress. The events that unfolded after that are alluded to in this recent piece. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/why-audit-culture-made-me-quit I quit my job to reclaim my academic freedom, and I am now reposting the original piece below.

The post was never about just one university. It was clear from the responses that the issues resonated with many academics at different institutions in different countries, and they continue to do so. Management by metrics is not the provenance of any one higher education system, and neither is the damage to mental health…

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La Revue Recherches – all but one now available online (at a price)

13I’ve mentioned the Recherches review more than a few times, because it was set up by Félix Guattari, and Foucault was involved in some discussions published in the journal. These conversations led to some collaborative work (a full bibliography here), some of which appeared in the Encres series also linked to the CERFI research institute. I discuss this work in my two books on Foucault.

Now all the issues of the journal – bar one – are now available online. I found library or second-hand copies of the key ones I needed for my Foucault research, but it’s useful to know there is a single place to go if I ever need another volume. The one issue not included online is issue 12, Trois milliards de pervers, which caused quite a bit of controversy at the time, and led to prosecution for obscenity. That issue has recently be reissued as a book, which is why it’s not available on the site. Here’s the rest of the information about the Recherches review going online.

Les éditions Recherches ont souhaité remettre à la disposition des lecteurs l’ensemble des numéros de la Revue Recherches, fondée par Felix Guattari, éditée par la Fgeri puis le Cerfi de 1965 à 1983, dont presque tous les numéros sont épuisés en papier depuis de nombreuses années. Tous les titres (sauf le 12) sont disponibles en version numérique sur la page Revue Recherches. Cette page a été récemment enrichie de nouveaux documents (articles, textes divers, numéros spéciaux) que nous vous invitons à consulter.

Quelques informations en lien avec l’historique de Recherches :

— parution récente aux éditions Recherches de
L’adolescent «fragile». Peut-on prédire en psychiatrie?, de Laelia Benoit.

— réédition chez notre partenaire La Chambre d’échos de
Le dit du brut, de Francis Bérezné,
où La grande Pâque, de Jacques Besse, est toujours disponible.

— Prolongation de la belle exposition «Les Hystériques» de Francis Bérezné
à la Halle Saint Pierre, Paris 19e, jusqu’au 20 mars.

NB. Au cours de vérifications récentes, nous avons observé qu’un certain nombre de commandes de numéros de la revue sont interrompues en cours de processus, avec des tentatives réitérées semblant indiquer que c’était involontaire. Si vous n’avez pu vous procurer un titre que vous souhaitiez, nous vous invitons à vous mettre en contact avec nous à ce sujet : editions-recherches@wanadoo.fr

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Christopher Watkin – Research Hacks # 6: Capture every important thought you have, even on the go

I’ve shared Christopher Watkin’s previous research hacks before. He now has a new one up – Research Hacks # 6: Capture every important thought you have, even on the go

His point is a good one, and his chosen device is a Dictaphone. But of course, most people have a device that can do this already with them – a phone. I use AudioMemos, which I also use to record my lectures, but there are plenty of others available.

You can read the rest of his Research Hacks here.

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‘Measuring Territories: The Techniques of Rule’ – talk to Kingston Shakespeare seminar, Rose Theatre, 16 March 2017

On Thursday I’ll be giving a talk at the Rose Theatre to the Kingston Shakespeare seminar, entitled ‘Measuring Territories: The Techniques of Rule’. It’s a version of Chapter 7 of my Shakespearean Territories manuscript. Speaking about Shakespeare in a theatre – doesn’t get much better than that…

All the details and a very generous introduction are here.

We are delighted to have Professor Stuart Elden give a talk at KiSS. His talk is on the central topic of Kingston Shakespeare, namely Shakespeare and philosophy, with a lecture entitled ‘Measuring Territories: The Techniques of Rule’. This session convenes on March 16, at our usual space in the Gallery of the Rose Theatre, Kingston. We begin at 6.30 pm. It is free and open to everyone. See also the Facebook event page!

Stuart Elden FBA is one of the foremost contemporary thinkers working at the intersection of politics, philosophy and geography. He is also an acute reader of Shakespeare, who brings brilliant analytic skills to the interpretation of the plays.

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Vertical Power – reflections from the Oslo workshop by Liv Brissach (in Norwegian)

Secure the volume: Vertical geopolitics and the depth of power

Gilo viaduct, West Bank 2009

Vertical Power – reflections from the Oslo workshop at which I spoke last week – by Liv Brissach (in Norwegian).

My own thoughts are here.

 

 

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‘A Smaller Audience than the Kardashians’: social media for academics with Prof Stuart Elden and Dr Mark Carrigan

A report on the discussion on social media and blogs which Mark Carrigan and I had with the Royal Holloway Landscape Surgery last month.

landscapesurgery's avatarLandscape Surgery

both2 The Landscape Surgery group was pleased to welcome Professor Stuart Elden (Professor of Political Theory and Geography at the University of Warwick, and founder of the Progressive Geographies blog) and Dr Mark Carrigan (digital Sociologist, social media consultant and author of the recently published book Social Media for Academics).

The aim of the session was to share knowledge about how to productively use social media platforms in an academic context – even though none of us will (probably) ever have a social media audience as big as the Kardashians, as our speakers pointed out.

Academic Blogging
Stuart shared some advice from his own personal experience of blogging…

1) Be Useful to Yourself
What is the blog for? How will it be helpful for you? The primary goal should always be that blogging is something that is useful to you as a researcher: whether this is…

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Why The Hell Should I Write A Book Review? An Academic Woman’s Perspective

Some very interesting thoughts about book reviews – about their importance, the need to value them, and what might be done about the low proportion of women who write them.

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ICE LAW Project schedule for Spring/Summer 2017

I mentioned the Territory sub-theme workshop earlier this week, but Phil Steinberg provides a roundup of all the spring/summer workshops of the wider ICE-LAW project.

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logo copySince arriving at Durham in 2013, I’ve slowly been developing the core structure of The Project on Indeterminate and Changing Environments: Law, the Anthropocene, and the World (The ICE LAW Project). Thanks to a generous grant from the Leverhulme Trust as well as sponsorship from UArctic’s Thematic Network on Arctic Law, I am happy to announce a full schedule of workshops and presentation sessions for Spring/Summer 2017:

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Three useful pieces of writing and other academic advice

How to make writing in the humanities less lonely‘ – Times Higher Education

The No-Fail Secret to Writing a Dissertation‘ – Chronicle Vitae

Impostor Syndrome Is Definitely a Thing‘ – The Chronicle of Higher Education

 

There are lots more collected at Writing and publishing posts and links on this site.

 

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Territory in Indeterminate and Changing Environments workshop – Amsterdam, 12 May 2017

As part of my visit to Amsterdam between April and June I’m organising the first of the two Territory sub-theme workshops of the ICE-LAW Project. It will be on 12 May 2017.

This workshop critically examines the extent to which concepts of territory depend upon an assumption of a stable and dry land. How are these complicated by indeterminate and changing environments? Such environments include oceans, sea-ice, glaciers, rivers, the submarine and the subterranean. While commonly understood as a bounded space under the control of a group of people, territory embodies a complex bundle of relations – political, geographical, economic, strategic, legal and technical. Questions of the materiality of territory – what might be called the question of terrain – remain underexplored. While the question of ice is at the heart of this project’s concerns, many of the issues raised apply to other parts of the Earth, and indeed to an adequate political-legal theory of territory more generally. Essentially the key question of this workshop is to begin thinking how theories of territory can better account for the complexities of the geophysical?

Participants include Luiza Bialasiewicz, Johanne Bruun, Stuart Elden, Juliet Fall, Marieke de Goede, Moriel Ram, Isobel Roele, Rachael Squire, Phil Steinberg and Darshan Vigneswaran.

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