Krista Bonello & Lena Wånggren (2023) : Working Conditions in a Marketised University System. Generation Precarity [book review]

Abstract

Academia has undergone a shift towards a market- and competition-based governing system that is resetting its standards and values. This phenomenon, known as neoliberal and performative academia (Pereira, 2017; Vatansever, 2020), academic and epistemic capitalism (Fochler, 2016) or careless academia (Lynch, 2010), has intensified corporate culture at universities, imposing high expectations on academics in terms of their productivity and eroding their agency, autonomy and subjectivity. The book ‘Working Conditions in a Marketised University System. Generation Precarity’ builds on this volume of research on neoliberal academia, but its novelty lies in its primary focus on the personal experiences of precariously employed post-PhD academics in the UK. Their voices are brought together to discuss how precarious working conditions are intertwined with the stages of academic and research careers. This topic is presented over the course of seven chapters (including introduction and conclusion). [excerpt]