Academic Labor

An Introduction: After the University?
Higher Education Reform
November 5, 2025

An Introduction: After the University?

Read Now
We Asked Where America’s Future Scientists Would Want to Live
Infrastructure
May 19, 2025

We Asked Where America’s Future Scientists Would Want to Live

Read Now
Why the Latest Strike Wave at UK Universities is Likely to Achieve Little
Opinion
November 23, 2022

Why the Latest Strike Wave at UK Universities is Likely to Achieve Little

Read Now
Is COVID-19 Enabling Academic Disaster Capitalism?
Industry
July 21, 2021

Is COVID-19 Enabling Academic Disaster Capitalism?

Read Now
Watch the Webinar: Deconstructing Neoliberalism in Higher Education

Watch the Webinar: Deconstructing Neoliberalism in Higher Education

Higher education is striving to address problems such as access, inclusion, and elitism, but is a neoliberalist foundation undermining these efforts—or even the system itself? An online forum held on April 21, “Deconstructing Neoliberalism in Higher Education: How can we promote greater equity and re-professionalize the professoriate?” addressed this quandary.

Read Now
2021: From Scholars to Disposable Labor in the Brave New World of Academic Capitalism

2021: From Scholars to Disposable Labor in the Brave New World of Academic Capitalism

In terms of the organization of academic labor, higher education is ever more sharply divided between, on the one hand, an advantaged minority in full-time, long-term employment and, on the other hand, academia’s reserve army of labor.

Read Now
Thinking of Taking an Academic Job in China? Let’s Talk About ‘De-coupling’ and the ‘China Bubble’

Thinking of Taking an Academic Job in China? Let’s Talk About ‘De-coupling’ and the ‘China Bubble’

To what extent do the realities of social research in China live up to the favorable image created by job ads on academic recruitment sites?

Read Now
Thinking of Taking an Academic Job in China? Better Plan Carefully

Thinking of Taking an Academic Job in China? Better Plan Carefully

At their heart, Chinese public universities are deeply parochial bureaucratic structures geared towards the party-state’s priorities for socio-economic development. In response to national and international pressures, some universities have recently begun to internationalize, with notably different degrees of enthusiasm. Others have not. You would do well to determine, the author writes, into what category a prospective employer falls.

Read Now
Thinking of Taking an Academic Job in China? Better Think Twice

Thinking of Taking an Academic Job in China? Better Think Twice

China has become an increasingly attractive destination for Western social scientists, both for those doing research in and on China and for those looking to continue their careers with meaningful, long-term perspectives.

Read Now
Not What It Used to Be: Academic Capitalism and Sociological Futures in the UK

Not What It Used to Be: Academic Capitalism and Sociological Futures in the UK

Sociology today, argues our Daniek Nehring, is defined by a fundamental contradiction between its everyday labor practices and its imaginary ethos.

Read Now
The Deskilled Academic: Bureaucracy Defeats Scholarship

The Deskilled Academic: Bureaucracy Defeats Scholarship

Intellectual labor comes to be largely external to the objectives of the bureaucratic regimes that dominate universities, argues our Daniel Nehring, and academics whose careers were built on intellectual labor turn out to be deskilled workers in organizational settings indifferent to their concerns.

Read Now
What’s Wrong With Academic Freedom in the UK?

What’s Wrong With Academic Freedom in the UK?

Given the ferocity of the current assault on academic freedom, argues Daniel Nehring, it seems to me that we may be close to a point of no return, past which ‘tone of voice policies’ and similar control mechanisms may become a norm into which coming generations of academics will be socialized as a matter of course.

Read Now

Subscribe to our mailing list

Get the latest news from the social and behavioral science community delivered straight to your inbox.