Knowledge Production in European Universities

Author(s):  
Marek Kwiek
2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-281
Author(s):  
Giulia Piccolino ◽  
Sabine Franklin

Many European universities have introduced procedures for assessing risks to social researchers. These procedures are inspired by occupational and safety health standards, whose logic is driven by the suppression of uncertainty. The rise of risk assessment also fits into a broader global trend of increasingly representing marginalised areas of the world as risky and insecure. While there is a lack of evidence about the actual impact of these procedures on mitigating risks, they are posing an increasing burden on researchers in terms of time, effort, and financial resources, affecting particularly research in and about Africa. Risk assessment can also influence the choice of research methods and reinforce neocolonial patterns of knowledge production by encouraging the transfer of risk to local partners, whose views are rarely integrated in the risk assessment process. This analysis discusses the unintended impact of risk assessment and gives some suggestions for improving processes of preventing risk to social researchers.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Ethel Brooks ◽  
Colin Clark ◽  
Iulius Rostas

In discussions about ‘race’, empire, imperialism – and the decolonisation of the curriculum in European universities – the discipline of Romani Studies has, until recently, been relatively quiet. This article seeks to address this silence and offers commentary on the institutional silences, via both disciplinary historical and contemporary country-specific analysis. A case study is investigated to tease out the ontological and epistemological transitions from early 19th Century Gypsylorism to 21st Century Critical Romani Studies: the teaching and learning of Romani Studies at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. We argue that the legacy of Gypsylorism, as much as the political climate in which the teaching and learning of contemporary Romani Studies occurs, are important aspects to consider. In moving forwards, we suggest that the models and pedagogies adopted at CEU since 2015 offer a useful and critical template for other universities and departments to consider adopting in progressing Romani knowledge production.


Author(s):  
Honghai LI ◽  
Jun CAI

The transformation of China's design innovation industry has highlighted the importance of design research. The design research process in practice can be regarded as the process of knowledge production. The design 3.0 mode based on knowledge production MODE2 has been shown in the Chinese design innovation industry. On this cognition, this paper establishes a map with two dimensions of how knowledge integration occurs in practice based design research, which are the design knowledge transfer and contextual transformation of design knowledge. We use this map to carry out the analysis of design research cases. Through the analysis, we define four typical practice based design research models from the viewpoint of knowledge integration. This method and the proposed model can provide a theoretical basis and a path for better management design research projects.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-50
Author(s):  
Matt Kennedy

This essay seeks to interrogate what it means to become a legible man as someone who held space as a multiplicity of identities before realising and negotiating my trans manhood. It raises the question of how we as trans people account for the shifting nature of our subjectivity, our embodiment and, indeed, our bodies. This essay locates this dialogue on the site of my body where I have placed many tattoos, which both speak to and inform my understanding of myself as a trans man in Ireland. Queer theory functions as a focal tool within this essay as I question family, home, transition, sexuality, and temporality through a queer autoethnographic reading of the tattoos on my body. This essay pays homage to the intersecting traditions within queer theory and autoethnography. It honours the necessity for the indefinable, for alternative knowledge production and representations, for the space we need in order to become, to allow for the uncertainty of our becoming.


Somatechnics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 188-205
Author(s):  
Sofia Varino

This article follows the trajectories of gluten in the context of Coeliac disease as a gastrointestinal condition managed by lifelong adherence to a gluten-free diet. Oriented by the concept of gluten as an actant (Latour), I engage in an analysis of gluten as a participant in volatile relations of consumption, contact, and contamination across coeliac eating. I ask questions about biomedical knowledge production in the context of everyday dietary practices alongside two current scientific research projects developing gluten-degrading enzymes and gluten-free wheat crops. Following the new materialisms of theorists like Elizabeth A. Wilson, Jane Bennett, Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour, I approach gluten as an alloy, an impure object, a hybrid assemblage with self-organizing and disorganizing capacity, not entirely peptide chain nor food additive, not only allergen but also the chewy, sticky substance that gives pizza dough its elastic, malleable consistency. Tracing the trajectories of gluten, this article is a case study of the tricky, slippery capacity of matter to participate in processes of scientific knowledge production.


Author(s):  
Natalia Kraevskaia

The article addresses the needs of educational system in context of rapidly developing globalization and explores internationalization of higher education as one of the main factors which contributes to integration of international dimension to professional training at universities. Different components and strategies of internationalization, such as strong collaboration in teaching, internationalization of the curriculum, cooperation in researches and knowledge production, students and professors’ mobility, and participation in international networks are analyzed in connection to education reform in Russia. The article provides the comparison of internationalization policies in Russian and Vietnamese education systems, argues that innovations in higher education should be adjusted to the national interests, traditions and mentality and finally describes new strategies in collaboration of Russia and Vietnam in the field of education.  


Imbizo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Siseko H. Kumalo

South African history is such that Blackness/Indigeneity were excluded from institutions of knowledge production. Contemporarily, the traditional University is defined as an institution predicated on the abjection of Blackness. This reality neither predetermined the positions and responses, nor presupposed complete/successful erasure of Blackness/Indigeneity owing to exclusion. I contend and detail how theorising, thinking about and through the Fact of Blackness, continue(d)—using the artistic works of Mhlongo, Makeba, Mbulu, and contemporarily, Leomile as examples. Analysing the music of the abovementioned artists, a move rooted in intersectional feminist approaches, will reveal modes of theorising that characterised the artistic expressions that define(d) the country. Theory generation, so construed, necessitates a judicious philosophical consideration if we are to resurrect the Black Archive. I conclude with an introspective question aimed at inspiring similar projects in other traditions that constitute the Black Archive, i.e. African languages and literature, theatre, art practice and theory.


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