Author: Dagrun Engen

— by Hampus Östh Gustafsson

The quickening in academic tempo has been considered by scholars coming from various fields, including Anthropology and Philosophy as well as Psychology and Sociology. One perspective that is often missing in this context, however, is the historical. So, what happens if we inquire into conflicting academic times throughout a longer period? Speaking from the vantage point of the historian, I see good reasons to doubt whether all this talk of a rushed academic existence really is characteristic of late modern societies only. Has there ever been a slow academia, or is that only a projection of nostalgic narratives leaning perilously close to clichés of the so-called ivory tower? Were older universities – although small scale and elitist – really of a completely different kind?

— by Jakob Egholm Feldt

As a problem for the philosophy and theory of the university: how can we think approaches to the current crisis of legitimacy, the fact that the university is no longer “civil”? The explorations, the work, towards a possible re-establishing of the university’s civility must, I believe, go through the realization that the future university is a project. Re-establishing the civility of the university means joining together. It is a process of making even small publics, of commoning, with others who care and long. Such minor key theorizing carries forward towards the project, the hopeful encounters when our communities are realized. It happens on the road.

— by Julia Molinari

First quarter of 2021. Year #2 of COVID19. Working at home. Small market town, The Midlands, UK.

Like many, I have not set foot on campus for over a year, but I have been emergency remote teaching, home schooling, and researching despite mixed messages about whether business as usual is possible, let alone desirable. Indeed, whether ‘business as usual’ is ever an appropriate moniker to describe academia remains moot. The connotations of ‘business’ with profit, commodity and performativity are all too close for comfort.

Julia Molinari has chosen the chronicle as the genre through which to reflect in times of COVID 19