Description
This is the age of the impact statement which of course is the statement! Freighted with potential, alas this choreographed pivot towards ‘useful’, ‘relevant’, and ‘impactful’scholarship is running a predictable and deleterious course. Universities are (once again) coming under pressure to commit more categorically to serving what governments deem to be the ‘national interest’, by contributing solutions which governments deem to be efficacious, to the twenty first century social, economic and environmental problems which governments deem to be mission critical. Attendant governmental technes are not pretty. Exposed to waves of neoliberal reform, engulfed by bureaucracies arising from new public governance, management and administration models, and antagonised by revanchist diktates from partisan and populist politicians championing sectional impact agendas, faculty are being called upon to perform what might be termed ‘flunky’ scholarship or to be more polite, state compliant ‘scholarship as a service’ (SAAS). For the record, alongside academic freedom, questions of societal purpose, accountability, and value are questions which most faculty consider to be of primary import and deserving of unconstrained interrogation. The problem is that they are simply too consequential to be surrendered to a conversation convened by vested interests and limited to circumscribed registers. What we do next matters. The purpose of this session is to reflect upon the meaning and implications of the impact agenda for who gets to be a hired geographer and which geographers get to produce what geographies, where, why and with what consequences| Period | 26 Aug 2024 |
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| Event title | 35th International Geographical Congress 2024: Politicising and reclaiming the impact agenda |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Dublin, IrelandShow on map |