BISR ECR Roundtable: The Challenges of Politicised Research
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck Central
The BISR Early Career Researchers Working Group is pleased to present the Annual Roundtable "The Challenges of Politicised Research."
Many early career researchers (ECR) research matters that are particularly politicised in the public sphere, such as debates on transgender identities, sex-work, immigration, violence against racialised groups, social welfare, police violence, war and interfaces between state powers in an increasingly volatile geopolitical environment. What pressures inhibit academic freedom of speech? How can we deal with these pressures, while finding supportive communities and having our voices heard? In the current political climate, there is an increasing risk of attacks from certain actors regarding both our research outputs and public pronouncements on these subjects. Additionally, our political positions permeate our work and extend beyond it, often conflicting with career considerations. Questions arise: Should we speak up about a particular issue? What might the ramifications be for my employability? Will the university support me if I come under fire? Will colleagues do the same? These challenges are exacerbated by a sector shaped by neoliberalism, characterized by atomized workers, marketized degree courses, casualized contracts and unsustainable workloads.
This roundtable will explore the complex reality of doing politicised research, asking which practices and resources might help us navigate the pressures of not just political/politicised research, but also the inherently political aspects of our work and subjectivity within British higher education. Speakers will talk and engage in dialogue with one another and members of the ECR community around such topics as:
- academic freedom of speech,
- pressures to reproduce certain viewpoints or avoid particular conclusions in research,
- communities and networks that support politicised work,
- examples of dealing with or encountering these various pressures, and
- the feelings and concrete problems for us as academics.
The speakers include Professor Jasmine Gideon, Dr Ashok Kumar, Professor David Renton (SOAS) and Dr Kalpana Wilson, with Dr Chao-Yo Cheng serving as the moderator. The Roundtable is supported by the Birkbeck Institute of Social Research and organised by Dr Chao-Yo Cheng, Dr Megan McElhone, Evan Sedgwick Jell, Dr Olivier Sibai and Helena Wee of the BISR ECR working group. Researchers from PhD students to junior/senior academics interested in the challenges of politicised research are welcome. The Roundtable will run between 11am to 1pm on Wednesday 29th May 2024, with a buffet lunch from 1pm to 2pm.
If you have any questions or would like further information, please contact Dr Chao-Yo Cheng (c.cheng@bbk.ac.uk).
Contact name:
Chao-Yo Cheng
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Dr Ashok Kumar
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Ashok Kumar is a Senior Lecturer of Political Economy at Birkbeck. He has published widely on a number of issues including urban theory, development, capitalist crisis, workers’ movements, global supply chains and identity. His most recent book Monopsony Capitalism: Power and Production in the Twilight of the Sweatshop Age (Cambridge University Press, 2020) was the winner of the American Sociological Association's 2021 Paul Sweezy Outstanding Book Prize and the 2022 Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Book Award. The book demonstrates that the production process under global capitalism is governed by a universal logic that shapes the structural bargaining power of workers. Alongside his research and teaching, he has sat on the editorial boards of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space and the urban geography journal City. He is currently a member of the editorial collective of the journal Historical Materialism. His research has been funded through generous grants from a number of bodies including as a Fulbright Scholar and the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship.
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Dr Kalpana Wilson
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Kalpana Wilson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Birkbeck. She works on critical international development and social justice. Her research explores questions of race/gender, labour, neoliberalism and reproductive rights and justice, with a particular focus on South Asia and its diasporas. She has a BA (Hons) in Economics from the University of Sussex, and an MA in Area Studies (South Asia) and a PhD in Political Economy from SOAS, University of London. She has previously taught at the London School of Economics (LSE) and SOAS. She is the author of Race, Racism and Development: Interrogating History, Discourse and Practice (Zed Books, 2012) and has published widely on race, gender, international development, women’s agency and rural labour movements.
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Professor David Renton
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Professor David Renton joined SOAS University of London as a Professor of Practice in 2021. He is also a historian and a barrister at Garden Court Chambers, where he has represented clients in some of the leading employment and housing cases of the past decade. David has represented blacklisted construction workers, teachers calling for Covid lockdowns, and supporters of the Occupy Movement in courts including the Court of Appeal and the European Court of Human Rights. His cases have been at the cutting edge of trade union law, anti-union discrimination, and the protection of free speech. David is the author of more than twenty books of history, social and legal theory, which have been translated into a dozen different languages. His work addresses the history of anti-racism and anti-fascism; the definitions of populism, authoritarianism and fascism; the impact of Covid on housing and employment law; whether and when it is appropriate to restrict freedom of expression; how liberation movements can prevent discrimination from re-emerging within their own ranks. He is now working on a project which addresses why the law has come to absorb areas of political controversy, how projects to roll back the expansion of the law can end up entrenching class and social power and whether social movements should work with or against the law. He also writes regularly for the Guardian and London Review of Books.
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Professor Jasmine Gideon
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Jasmine Gideon is Professor of Global Health and Development in the School of Social Sciences at Birkbeck with a specific interest in the gendered political economy of health in Latin America and issues around health and migration. She has carried out consultancies for a range of development institutions, including Pan American Health Organisation, Global Health 5050 and UN Women. She is currently the Co-Investigator of an Academy of Medical Science funded network 'Understanding the inequality impacts of health PPPs in Middle Income Countries' with colleagues from Peru, Argentina, Brazil, India and Kenya. She has also led an ESRC GCRF network "Equalities in Public Private Partnerships" (EQUIPPS) and was the Co-Investigator on a GCRF funded network Andean Network for Venezuelan Migrants. She is co-editor of the Agenda book series "Women's Work."