Research assessment, emotional practices, and the social hierarchy: what can you afford to feel?

Abstract

This paper investigates how the emotional responses towards research assessment reflect both social position and strategy in the struggle for scientific authority. This is examined through interviews with humanities researchers conducted as a part of a study on the implications for research practice of the Danish Bibliometric Research Indicator (BFI). Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Scheer and Matthäus’ conceptualisation of the affective habitus and emotional practices, our research suggests that emotions can be conceptualized as strategic practices closely tied to the hierarchical position of the researchers. Established researchers deployed emotional practices as a form of resistance against compliance-based research assessment to retain their scientific authority and autonomy, while early-career researchers generally wanted to resist but their precarious positions did not afford them the possibility to do so. The study thus highlights the potential of studying emotions in relation to resistance and reproduction of dominance in higher education.

Keywords:

• Research assessment
• academic governance
• emotional practices
• scientific habitus

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Professor Susan Wright and Professor Claire Maxwell for their valuable inputs on earlier drafts of this article, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University.