"Slow Universities" Blog post series

Monday, May 14, 2018 - 15:00

A seminar held in the Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute explored how dialogues within and beyond the Higher Education sector are converging around the need for a socio-cultural shift towards slowing down the pace of work, life and consumption, improving well-being and providing counter narratives to processes of globalisation and the ‘Gridlock’ that Hale, Held and Young (2013) write about. In a seminar series initiated at Durham University and a series of blogs, colleagues and Professor Maggie O’Neill addressed the potential of the concept of the SLOW University for their experiences of work, life, time, well-being and the very meaning of the University in current times. The motivation for organising the seminars emerged from dialogue with colleagues, biographical experiences and resistance to the speeding up of Higher Education, the impact of the audit culture and ‘marketisation’; as well as growing pressures, for some, in relation to developing a work/life balance in the context of metrics, audit, efficiency, increased competition, demand management of research grant generation and the importance of hitting performance targets for career development and promotion. The gendered dimensions of these issues have been central to these discussions.

Discussants at the Maynooth seminar included:

Chair: Professor Linda Connolly, Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute

Professor Sharon Todd, Department of Education, Maynooth University, Dr Mary Murphy, Department of Sociology/Politics, Maynooth University and Professor Gerry Kearns, Department of Geography, Maynooth University

A blog by each participant will be posted each day this week.