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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Olivia Mason, Professor Nick MegoranORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
The increased reliance of universities on a pool of highly skilled but poorly paid casualised academic labour for teaching and research has emerged as a defining feature of higher education provision under neoliberal New Public Management. Based on seventeen visual timeline interviews with academics in the North East of England, this article augments and extends existing studies of precarity through a framing of dehumanisation and humanisation. Specifically, we suggest casualisation is dehumanising in four ways: it renders individuals invisible; vulnerable to exploitation; denies them academic freedom; and hampers them in constructing a life narrative projecting into the future. We conclude that casualisation is not simply as the product of a reprehensible political economy but that it is an afront to the very meaning and dignity of being human.
Author(s): Mason O, Megoran N
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences
Year: 2021
Volume: 14
Issue: 1
Pages: 35-59
Print publication date: 01/03/2021
Online publication date: 01/03/2021
Acceptance date: 30/09/2020
Date deposited: 03/11/2020
ISSN (print): 1755-2273
ISSN (electronic): 1755-2281
Publisher: Berghahn Journals
URL: https://doi.org/10.3167/latiss.2021.140103
DOI: 10.3167/latiss.2021.140103
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