This postdoctoral project explores the conditions of critical research within today's academia. The project intervenes in ongoing debates about the role of critical research in modern society and within polarised debate cultures: What happens to the conditions of critical research in an academic landscape that is increasingly becoming market-driven, while at the same time engaging with a public sphere that is becoming more polarised? What is the role of critical research in the face of algorithmic rationalities and diminished democratic trust?
More specifically, the project will investigate what happens to the writing practices of gender and migration research in the context of increased standardisation and polarisation. How do gender and migration researchers experience, negotiate, and resist this dual pressure in their academic writing practices? By combining text analysis with qualitative interviews, the aim is to shed light on the writing process, from the ideation stage to final publication.
Promoting more dialogical – and less competitive and coercive – knowledge practices has been a cornerstone for feminist and postcolonial epistemologies. Therefore, it can be argued that these critical research fields possess significant resources to resist the tendencies toward standardisation and polarisation. This creates an interesting paradox: dialogical knowledge ideals seem to be particularly endangered by increased polarisation and standardisation, while at the same time they appear as promising counterforces against these very tendencies.
