Organisers: Dr Lotta Snickare (University of Oslo) and Dr Charlotte Morris (Portsmouth University)
Registration: This session is a part of a conference European Universities - Critical Futures that takes place in person in Copenhagen as well as online (13-15 December 2021). The online participation will be via Microsoft Teams (not Zoom). To receive the link, register for as Participant (attending online) here: https://events.au.dk/keystoneconference/signup
Background: In recent years, the casualization of labour within academia has increased, even in the richest countries of the Global North (Gupta, Habjan, and Tutek 2016). In the UK, the Universities and College Union (UCU) concluded that as of 2014 ‘at least 54% of all academic staff and 49% of academics teaching in our universities are on an insecure contract’ (Universities and Colleges Union 2016, 4). Women and/or minority ethnic academics are more likely to be on casualised contracts than their white male peers (Equality Challenge Unit [ECU], 2016).
A growing number of studies have focused on the experiences of this group of academics and the effects of such insecurity. These include lack of dependable income and benefits, lack of mentoring, support and capacity building, and an inability to plan for the future. There are also more subtle effects on self-esteem and professional identity of ongoing ‘micro’ inequities of exclusion and marginalisation in everyday academic life (Ylijoki 2010; Leathwood and Read 2013; Cortois and O'Keefe, 2015; Acker and Haque 2017; Bataille and Le Feuvre, 2017; Read and Leathwood 2018; Murgia and Poggio, 2018; Ivancheva et al., 2019).
Building on such work, the papers in this symposium specifically focus on gender and race in relation to these dynamics, across European contexts in particular. We will contribute new empirical knowledge to international debates on the gendered and racialised impacts of casualization in the sector on academic life and work, thus potentially facilitating challenge and change to what is increasingly becoming the ‘new normal’ of the casualised university.
Programme: The session will involve six short papers exploring aspects of precarity and inequalities in European contexts followed by a discussion around making the case for change.
