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.