The new Australian government has little time for what it calls the “increasingly ridiculous” research grants being allocated by the Australian Research Council. This has happened before in Australian politics and as in the previous instance the targets are humanities research. As it is, humanities research attracts only a very small percentage of overall research …
Posted on my site michel-foucault.com Delacampagne But don’t the public expect the critic to provide them with precise assessments as to the value of a work? Foucault I don’t know whether the public do or do not expect the critic to judge works or authors. Judges were there, I think, before they were able to …
A version of this piece was published in The Australian Higher Education Supplement on 4th April 2012 as ‘Credit where it’s due – but who deserves top billing?’ I posted this on my blog last year but have moved it up as I have made quite a few revisions. We do not characterise a ‘philosophical …
A version of this piece was originally published as ‘Conformity blunts creativity’, The Australian. Higher Education Supplement, Dec 12, 2007. I have added a few minor tweaks to bring it more up to date. But unfortunately not a lot has changed since 2007! Up till now there have been two dominant images of the humanities and …
Kate Clancy notes the following on The Scientific American blog (link via Jo VanEvery’s blog) But are peer-reviewed publications, read and cited by only by a select group of those peers, the best way to assess influence and importance? They are certainly no longer the only way. My 2006 paper on iron-deficiency anemia and menstruation …
In a most interesting post titled Open access -for all?, Stuart Elden remarks: We started the Society and Space open site as a partner to the print journal and the publisher’s site […] You would think that a quick – material goes up usually within a day or two of being delivered in final form …
There has been quite a discussion of late going on in the academic blogosphere about both the advantages and difficulties associated with academic blogging. (See links at the end of this post). I have found references in this discussion to an avoidance by academics of public exposure particularly interesting. This kind of avoidance has become …
I was interested by this comment by Rhiannon Bury in an interview on Henry Jenkin’s blog Let me close by saying that Web 2.0 technologies are changing the way I disseminate research on fandom. The norm in academia is to analyze our data behind closed doors and not report on it until we have a …
Stuart kindly responded to the comments in my previous post with some further interesting observations. I am adding a couple of clarifications here to clear up the amibiguities in my initial comment. I should emphasise that I am coming from the point of view of readership and impact, rather than production. The problem of readership …
Stuart Elden has a number of particularly interesting posts on academic writing on his blog Progressive Geographies. Recently he put up a post offering excellent advice on preparing for journal publication and then another on his own writing practices which has prompted the following reflections on my part. Stuart notes that his book: The Birth …
Refracted Input 