Academic Knowledge Production Research Articles

Understanding Digital Turn in Urban Research: A Bibliometric Analysis of Contemporary Global Urban Literature

This paper aims to examine the effects of digital technologies on academic knowledge production in the field of urban research. It provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of technology-based urban research literature, delineates the knowledge structure, and investigates prevalent trends. The study employs bibliometric analysis to analyze bibliographical and textual data extracted from scientific documents, which allows for the discovery of the existing epistemological structure of the discipline or research domain. The research was conducted by conducting a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the literature available in the Web of Science Core Collection regarding how concepts such as big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT) are discussed in academic papers in the field of urban studies. A total of 2055 academic papers that met the established criteria were identified and analyzed using bibliometric analysis software called Bibliometrix. The results of the research aid in examining the integration of technological advancements into urban research, and reveal the temporal, spatial, and disciplinary distribution of scientific articles, as well as their reflections on new research areas and both frequently studied and yet unexplored topics.

Catching up with the core or the Red Queen phenomenon? Publication strategies of top local government scholars in the context of centrality, institutional reforms and career length

AbstractThis paper investigates publication strategies of the most distinguished local government researchers in eight European countries. Drawing upon dependency theory, accumulative advantage theory and ‘utility maximizing’ theory, we compare publication strategies of scholars from countries that vary in terms of the distance from the core of academic knowledge production, also taking into consideration their career length (academic age). The two publication strategies compared are international visibility and domestic visibility. The analysis confirmed the hypothesis that younger scholars are more prone to adopt internationalization strategy which has been institutionally incentivized by NPM reforms. However, the difference among core, catching‐up and peripheral countries is not as sizeable as expected.

The value of research activities “other than” publishing articles: reflections on an experimental workshop series

PurposeThe purpose of this essay is to explore the opportunities and challenges that early-career researchers (ECRs) face when they seek to contribute to academic knowledge production through research activities “other than” those directly focused on making progress with their own, to-be-published, research papers in a context associated with the “publish or perish” (PoP) mentality.Design/methodology/approachDrawing broadly on the notion of technologies of humility (Jasanoff, 2003), this reflective essay develops upon the experiences of the authors in organizing and participating in a series of nine workshops undertaken between June 2013 and April 2021, as well as the arduous process of writing this paper itself. Retrospective accounts, workshop materials, email exchanges and surveys of workshop participants provide the key data sources for the analysis presented in the paper.FindingsThe paper shows how the organization of the workshops is intertwined with the building of a small community of ECRs and exploration of how to address the perceived limitations of a “gap-spotting” approach to developing research ideas and questions. The analysis foregrounds how the workshops provide a seemingly valuable research experience that is not without contradictions. Workshop participation reveals tensions between engagement in activities “other than” working on papers for publication and institutionalized pressures to produce publication outputs, between the (weak) perceived status of ECRs in the field and the aspiration to make a scholarly contribution, and between the desire to develop a personally satisfying intellectual journey and the pressure to respond to requirements that allow access to a wider community of scholars.Originality/valueOur analysis contributes to debates about the ways in which seemingly valuable outputs are produced in academia despite a pervasive “publish or perish” mentality. The analysis also shows how reflexive writing can help to better understand the opportunities and challenges of pursuing activities that might be considered “unproductive” because they are not directly related to to-be-published papers.

Resisting the Epistemic Straight Gaze in the Anti-gender Era: Italian LGBTIQ+ Studies and Scholars, 2013–2023

Abstract: This article discusses the challenges faced by scholars involved in gender and LGBTIQ+ studies and research, within a context of increased attacks by anti-gender coalitions of social movements and parties. It highlights the precarious and vulnerable position of gender and LGBTIQ+ scholars in an academic environment set by neoliberal agendas and anti-gender rhetoric. The contribution reflects on the role of academic institutions in reinforcing dominant power structures and the resistance efforts by LGBTIQ+ scholars against this backdrop. The study underscores the importance of understanding these dynamics for the future of LGBTIQ+ studies and the broader context of academic freedom and knowledge production in Italy and beyond.

Nomads, thresholds, and leaves: Queer entanglements within the AcademicConferenceMachine

AbstractThis paper presents the mise en espace of an anti‐drama‐liturgy written for the Conference “Salute e Benessere delle Persone Transgender e Gender Diverse: Buone Prassi e Nuove Prospettive [Wellbeing of Transgender and Gender Diverse People: Good Practices and New Perspectives]”. By providing an example of conferencing differently, the paper depicts an elliptical (round)table that questions normative assumptions on gender and sexuality and established practices of academic knowledge production and dissemination. It does so, along the edge of anti‐binarism, in three ways. Firstly, there is the choice of an elliptical (round)table that is polycentric: it broadens the point of view from the margins. Secondly, our writing sought to favor embodied questioning and dialog over the structured speech report typical of conferences, and the third way is inherent to the genre of theatrical writing related to the mise en espace format, which enables us to ask questions about the relationship between our bodies, broader materiality, and the dominant norms of academic and gendered practices. The intertwining of these elements makes our queering the AcademicConferenceMachine, which is an invitation to recognize the political performativity and imaginative possibilities of any (academic) encounter.

Reinventing the politics of knowledge production in migration studies: introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT This special issue (SI) calls for reinventing the politics of knowledge production in migration studies. Academic migration research should make knowledge production an essential part of its research agenda if it wants to remain relevant in the transnational field of migration research. A risk of marginalisation stems from three interrelated tendencies: First, non-academic actors producing authoritative knowledge about migration have proliferated in recent years. Secondly, academic knowledge production is challenged both by counter-knowledge produced by social movements as well as new digital methods and information structures owned by policy-oriented and private actors. Thirdly, academics no longer hold a hegemonic position in the transnational field of migration research. The contributions to this SI interrogate the politics of knowledge production on migration along three lines of inquiry: (1) the enactment of migration as an intelligible object of government through practices of quantification, categorisation and visualisation; (2) the production of control knowledge in border encounters about subjects targeted as migrants and (3) the modes of thought seeking to unknow and re-know migration beyond dominant nation-state centric understandings. This introduction elaborates how the nine articles of the SI intervene in the politics of knowledge production in migration studies along these lines of inquiry.

Tiered vocabulary and raciolinguistic discourses of deficit: from academic scholarship to education policy

Tiered vocabulary is a pervasive concept in academic scholarship, education policy, and schools. It involves placing individual words into hierarchically arranged tiers, based on their apparent simplicity, sophistication, utility, and complexity, with these categorisations used to determine which words carry value in the classroom. In this article I conduct a genealogy of tiered vocabulary and argue that it is a raciolinguistic ideology which frames the language practices of racialised and working-class children as deficient and requiring modification. I trace the ideological roots of tiered vocabulary to European colonial representations of the purportedly limited vocabulary of Black African communities. I then examine how tiered vocabulary emerged as a concept in 1980s US academic knowledge production, based on experiments led by white academics on predominantly Black children from low-income homes. I show how tiered vocabulary is descendant from deficit, anti-Black thinking which characterised mainstream educational linguistics in the 1960s. I then focus on how it has become normalised in England’s education policy in the 2020s, as part of a flawed theory of change which deems that the acquisition of academic language is a tool for enabling social justice. Ultimately, I show how tiered vocabulary is a flawed theory of language which ties together race and class in producing discourses of linguistic deficiency, and legitimises language policing which undermines the education of marginalised children.

Algorithmic power and scientific knowledge

Abstract This paper critically revisits traditional perspectives on technology within academic and scientific writing studies. It aims to comprehend the intricate, emerging, and dynamic sociotechnical configurations that underlie contemporary scientific practices. These practices increasingly involve language, text, and literacy practices, seen as products of the collaboration between humans and machines. The paper draws on empirical research on influential institutional metadiscourses in high-impact scientific writing produced and/or disseminated by public universities and a research institute in the State of São Paulo (Brazil), whose local policies of globalization are driven by international university rankings. I use a qualitative content analysis approach grounded in socio-anthropological, socio-semiotic, and pragmatic studies of linguistic ideologies to shed light on how ideological and socio-semiotic processes support the metapragmatics of scientific writing in university policy documents. This metapragmatics is utterly alien to the role of performative sociotechnical infrastructures in the production, distribution, and hierarchization of scientific texts. Additionally, these documents do not account for the diverse conditions and restrictions that shape the production and circulation of academic knowledge in geopolitically marginal and equally diverse regions within the country, including those within São Paulo.

Knowledge Management Practices in Enhancing Academic Output: A Study of Indonesian Islamic Universities

This study examines knowledge management strategies employed by Islamic universities in Indonesia to boost academic knowledge production. It explores the policies designed to support lecturers and students in producing and publishing scholarly work that is accessible and recognized within the scientific community. Focusing on five state Islamic Higher Education institutions (PTKIN) selected for their Sinta 2.0 ranking, the research identifies unique and standard policies across these universities to enhance knowledge output. Findings reveal that each PTKIN implements specific strategies to increase knowledge production and values contributions to reputable international journals. These strategies include providing resources and support for knowledge creation rooted in a shared foundation of program improvements directed by the Ministry of Religious Affairs. The study highlights how these universities adapt and extend existing initiatives to meet their unique needs, demonstrating the effectiveness of tailored knowledge management practices in fostering academic excellence.

The death of thought: Reading Bataille in the ruins of a university

This paper takes on and explores the disturbing and perhaps counter-intuitive notion that the university is the place where the intellect goes to die. This idea is explored alongside Georges Bataille’s suggestion that the death of thought might actually be a worthy pursuit and only thought which seeks its own limits is worth striving for. The deleterious effects of the university upon thought are nonetheless contrasted to Bataille’s own attempts to take thought to the point of its expiration. The key difference between the ‘teaching of death’ that Bataille has in mind, and the enactment of the death of thinking that the university achieves is this: Bataille seeks, however impossibly, to bring death “into the field of vision”. Academic knowledge production, by contrast, with its systematism, its rigor, its proceduralism and its subsumption by work, merely abandons the thinking subject to the inevitable result, which for Bataille, is unthinking servility, a premature, utterly suppressed, and domesticated, death-in-life.

Privileged observers and colonial continuities

AbstractAnthropological debates about development are often framed by a moral contrast between pure and instrumental knowledge. But the good of anthropology is situationally produced, as we can demonstrate by reflecting on the discipline's institutional conditions. Institutional contexts sustain our professional identities and research practices, including the claimed differences between them. These contexts are in turn produced by political economies of development expertise and academic knowledge production. Indeed, social anthropology's core research practices were shaped by its configuration within political economies of colonial governance, and they were perpetuated through the expansion of university systems. We should, then, stop sustaining the fictions that our work is situated outside political economies of interest or that we write purely in pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Rather, we need to be more transparent about the economies that determine the kinds of knowledge we produce and the political implications of what we authorize as knowledge.

Uncovering power asymmetries in North-South research collaborations – An example from sustainability research in Tanzania

North - South collaboration between scientists and collaborators is increasingly prominent and promoted in research. This study examines power dynamics within a North-South research collaboration project conducted between institutions in Tanzania and Germany. The research design is guided by postcolonial considerations of knowledge production and seeks to amplify underrepresented voices from the South. The analysis reveals power manifestations in project setup, processes, and outcomes, through three perspectives: resources, social relations, and discourses. The study confirms the prevailing impression of the Northern partner as the donor and conceptualizer, directing the research path, while the Southern partner remains in a peripheral position as the local implementor. Both parties benefit from the collaboration, but the Northern partner gains more in terms of academic recognition and reproduction, furthering the asymmetrical power distance. This study concludes that to approach the ideal mutual knowledge co-production, collaborations should reconsider funding structures, question ways of knowing, increase the importance of equal capacity building, and challenge established Western academic knowledge production structures.

Rightful Recognition of Kurdistan as a Colony and De-colonizing Knowledge Production

In recent years the field of Kurdish Studies has witnessed several workshops and panels on the theme of “decolonizing,” influenced by such conversations in Postcolonial, Black and Indigenous Studies. Interestingly, many of these attempts in academic venues have not engaged with the question of ongoing colonial status of Kurdistan and how this status impacts knowledge production. This paper aims to propose a clear definition of a relationship of coloniality with a focus on colonial violence in the region of Bakur and explain why such terminology is necessary, intellectually and politically. As it explains the limits of the terminology used in academic knowledge production about state violence and Kurdish resistance, it also discusses contemporary alternatives to these dominant academic frameworks. It is argued that a rightful decolonization of knowledge about Kurdistan and freedom movements in the region can take place when we simultaneously recognize ongoing colonization, and acknowledge that it is ultimately the organized anti-colonial movements, which can determine definitions of self-determination, as well as the political means to gain and sustain it.

Hegemonic Knowledge and Situated Knowledge

What is power? What is knowledge? What is the link between power and knowledge? This paper interrogates the relationship between knowledge and power in the context of Guinea's epidemic crises and political events. It draws on observational data collected during the Ebola epidemic (2013-2016), the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-2022), and the ongoing military transition in the country since September 2021. The article first looks at the conception of the relationship between power and knowledge in decolonial literature and the writings of Amadou Hampâté Bâ. The text then describes this relationship in the context of the Ebola and Covid-19 epidemics, and in the ongoing political transition. Finally, the analysis provides an epistemological reflection on knowledge-situated in Guinea to rethink the conceptual and empirical research perspective on the production and circulation of (academic) knowledge in the country's knowledge ecology.

ENGAGED STUDY OF RELIGION:

The activist approach remains a neglected area in the study of religion(s). By activist, we mean a socially engaged yet non-confessional stance that focuses on the scholar dealing with the relationship between religion and the public sphere. While other disciplines are incorporating the socio-political and socially transformative potential of academic knowledge production into their curricula, the field of the study of religion(s) is lagging behind. The (dis)engagement and rejection of activist approaches in the study of religion seems to be determined by paradigms of knowledge production, the dominance of understanding and explanatory approaches, the programmatic socio-political neutrality of the religious studies scholar imposed by the discipline, and claims to the specificity and uniqueness of the object of study. However, as we attempt to show, several modes of engagement can be identified that lie between the scholar’s attitudes of engagement and programmatic neutrality in the study of religion(s), namely translating, deconstructing, meditating and transforming. We propose that these modes should be included in the spectrum of approaches that straddle the critical and activist study of religion. We argue for the radical mode of engagement as a further step in developing the link between research and activism in the study of religion. In doing so, we focus on the scholar(s) of religion as an authority figure, an agent of power distribution, capable of proposing reformulations, accompanying negotiations, and supporting processes of reordering the contemporary post-secular public sphere. This article is an invitation to discuss the activist approach within the scientific study of religion. We also hope to stimulate debate on more radical forms of the activist approach, which we would call “the radical study of religion(s)”.

Digital Genres in Academic Knowledge Production and Communication, by María José Luzón and Carmen Pérez-Llantada

Digital Genres in Academic Knowledge Production and Communication, by María José Luzón and Carmen Pérez-Llantada

Who owns religion? Scholars, Sikhs and the public sphere

ABSTRACT This paper revisits the question “Who Owns Religion?”, in the context of a recent analysis of debates in religious studies, marked by controversy and friction between members of religious traditions and scholars writing about those traditions. Habermas’s concept of a public sphere is at the center of an analysis by Laurie Patton that uses six case studies, including one involving the Sikh tradition. The paper reviews this conceptual framing and the accompanying analysis, provides a reconsideration of the Sikh case, which pertains to the construction of religious boundaries in that tradition, and draws more general lessons, including the functioning of academia as well as the contextual appropriateness of the concept of the public sphere. It argues that “eruptions” in the public sphere can be reduced by improvements in academic knowledge production, to provide a better foundation for navigating differences in modes of reasoning, or between the religious and the secular.

Magic of feminist bridging

Are feminist coalitions magical enough to survive and endure while questioning and shaking the colonial/racist foundations of Swedish academic knowledge production and the overall Swedish society? Can feminist bridging and collective writing remain a magical process even when grappling with difficult experiences and memories of othering and racialisation? This is a creatively and collectively written article on feminist coalition building, and its importance in thinking, articulating and deconstructing race, racialization and racist structures. More than two years ago, seven interdisciplinary gender studies scholars of mixed ethnic and racial origins, came together to explore our differently situated experiences of disidentifying with Swedish academia and society in a collective we call Loving Coalitions. Against the background of Swedish exceptionalism, historical amnesia of Sweden’s colonial past and present, and the deafening silence on Swedish whiteness and racism, we are sharing our poems, letters, texts and testimonies of racist interactions in Swedish academia and society. While doing so, we discuss how moving away from conventional ways of doing research and experimenting with creative methodological alternatives, such as automatic writing, epistolary formats, poems, fiction, collective memory-work, allow us to acknowledge and embrace our different life backgrounds and academic trajectories as a mode of knowledge production. We hope and believe that our experiences, refl ections and ways to resist racism and Othering in Sweden and Swedish academia through alternative coalition building, based on mutual care and love, can be relevant in a Danish context as well.

Digital Genres in Academic Knowledge Production and Communication: Perspectives and Practices

Digital Genres in Academic Knowledge Production and Communication: Perspectives and Practices

Undisciplined Knowledge: Intersectional Black European Studies

This article explores the structural dependence of humanities disciplines on a Eurocentric model of knowledge production that inevitably marginalizes racialized communities, scholars of color, and their intellectual productions. Using the increasing attacks on the interdisciplines in the United States as its starting point, the article shows that a defense of the humanities as “above politics” contributes to this delegitimization of marginalized knowledge. Turning to the European context, it suggests that a decolonizing of academe must include a reckoning with the Continent’s colonial past (and present), including the role of the Left, and involve a radically different approach to disciplinarity. Finally, the article offers the recent intersectional Black European studies initiative as an example of such a radically different model of academic knowledge production.