Why do academics do unfunded research? Resistance, compliance and identity in the UK neo-liberal university

Abstract

This article explores the understandings of academics who carry out unfunded research and the nature of their academic identity, in a context where research funding is realigned to government and corporate needs, and the academic career is recast as an entrepreneurial project. It draws on in-depth interviews with academics working in UK universities, at different career stages in a range of disciplines. Main findings include that research is 'self-funded' rather than unfunded, and that participants often decided not to apply for external funding. A major reason for this was a sense of resistance motivated by intellectual creativity and flexible autonomy. At the same time, unfunded research also could be compliance with a neo-liberalised university agenda, viewed as entrepreneurial. Unfunded research can be viewed as a way of managing tensions between wanting and needing to do research, throwing light on the identity of being a contemporary intellectualentrepreneurial academic in the neo-liberalised university.

The time of dialogic sociology

“…(Habermas, 1984: 118-119) Weber (1978) defined sociology as 'a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action' (p. 4). We have extensive literature about how neoliberalism threatens academic freedom in science and universities (Edwards, 2022;Feldman and Sandoval, 2018;Morrish, 2020). This article presents an analysis of how the sociology participating in the internal processes and debates on the elaboration of scientific research programs has succeeded in developing a conception very different to neoliberalism.…”

Academic inbreeding and choice of strategic research approaches

“…When the latter occurs, we observe a negative manifestation of this dimension, which is the conservative approach (operationalised as low scores in the discovery dimension), a preference to work in mature, safer topics, and a focus on incremental research findings (Klavans et al, 2013). The tolerance to low funding dimension represents the propensity to engage in research topics even in the absence or scarcity of research funding (Edwards, 2020). The degree of collaboration is a dimension that evaluates both the willingness and opportunity to engage in collaborative research ventures (Birnholtz, 2007).…”

The Language of Sustainable Tourism as a Proxy Indicator of Quality

“…Whilst no specific examples will be mentioned, all knowledge gathered over countless hours of drafting impact case studies, evaluating the suitability of impact evidence, and relating it to institutional requirements does inform the here presented results. We deem this to be ethical, as the here presented research is unfunded and represents the authors' chosen way to criticize the working habits and processes that cannot be voiced in day-to-day operations [40].…”