Presentation to MA Academic Practice, NUI Galway, based on research looking at impact of research performance systems on semi-peripheral higher education systems.

1. Research Selectivity and the
Destruction of Authentic
Scholarship? The View from the
(semi) Periphery
Simon Warren, NUI Galway
Marcin Starnawski, Dolnośląska Szkoła Wyższa
(University of Lower Silesia)
Marcin Gołębniak, Dolnośląska Szkoła Wyższa
(University of Lower Silesia)

2. Trying to define the research
problematic
• Beginnings
• A particular policy issue – ‘research
selectivity’
• An organising metaphor – ‘semi-peripheral’

3. Research
selectivity –
Ireland

4. Selection as the
Struggle for
Visibility
• Global
• Institutional
• Individual
Global University
Rankings
National
Auditing and
Differential/Co
mpetitive
Funding –
Compact/REF
Institutional
Audit Research? A view from the
centre…

6. Initial Organising Questions
• What does the
experience of research
selectivity look like in
semi-peripheral systems
of European higher
education?
• In what ways are semi-
peripheral systems
governed through
regional and global
systems of surveillance
and measurement?
• How is internal selectivity
arranged at both national
and institutional level
(e.g. how are the
humanities dealt with)?
• How are different
categories of academic
managed in relation to
research selectivity?

7. Reputational Ghetto* – the
case of the Humanities?
*Based on: Slater, T. and Anderson, N. (2012), The
reputational ghetto: territorial stigmatisation in St Paul’s,
Bristol. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
37: 530–546. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00490.x
Bandit's Roost (1888) by Jacob Riis, from How
the Other Half Lives. This image is Bandit's
Roost at 59½Mulberry Street, considered the
most crime-ridden, dangerous part of New
York City.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Riis

8. Tentative Analysis
• PRIVATE TROUBLES/PUBLIC ISSUES
• TRANSFORMING DISCIPLINARY PRACTICE
• EPISTEMIC DISJUNCTURE

9. Next?
• Develop a network – expand research capacity
– COST Action
– NORFACE
• Publication – work with and around the
paradox