Troubling intra-actions: gender, neo-liberalism and research in the global academy

Abstract

This article raises questions about gender in the neo-liberalised research economy. Theoretically, it includes Barad’s concept of intra-action to analyse how discursive-material differences between research winners and losers are created and sustained. Empirically, it draws on international research conducted at British Council seminars on Absent Talent: Women in Research and Academic Leadership. I examine how neo-liberal policy cultures of financialisation and market values are entangled in research processes, management, and academic identities. I discuss the intra-actions or mingling of knowledge capitalism, research as a vehicle for surveillance and performance management, the affective economy, gendered maldistributions of opportunity structures and academic identities. I argue that research is increasingly instrumentalised as a major relay of power in the construction and destruction of academic identities, with material and affective consequences. The paper poses questions about how disqualifications are constituted and reproduced via a range of intra-actions including research financialisation and its impact on academic identities and the under-representation of women as research leaders in the global academy.

Keywords:

• neo-liberalism
• intra-action
• gender
• research economy
• financialisation policy

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the British Council and Katherine Forestier for enabling and facilitating the empirical research, the 72 women participants, and the three anonymous reviewers and journal editors for their kind and constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.