Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education
Special Issue on Slow Academia
Guest Editors
Agnes Bosanquet, Macquarie University, Australia
Sean Sturm, University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand
Special Issue
This special issue of Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education aims to engage critically
with philosophies and theories of slowness to explore possibilities for inhabiting the idea of
the university and academic work and identities differently. Slow academia is often defined
in the negative as a resistance to the pace of accelerated academia in the neoliberal university
– something other than frenetic, competitive, metricised, anxiety-promoting academic
performativity.
Theorising slow academia invites a more tentative or speculative mood: inconclusive,
uncertain, imaginative, experimental, curious, questioning, incomplete, appreciative,
respectful, generous, meandering, meditative, patient, ethical, speculative, unknowing. What
might closer attention to theorising slow academia offer? We welcome your contributions to
imagining answers to this question.
Contributions might address, but are not limited to, the following areas:
- philosophical discussion of concepts such as affect, care, collegiality, generosity,
hospitality, kindness, play, time or wonder, in relation to academic identities and work - slow interventions for higher education challenges and futures — activism,
decolonisation, indigenisation, feasible utopias, open education - theorisation of slow academia using critical theory
- feminist challenges to accelerated, neoliberal, performative higher education
critical responses to writing on slowness in higher education - speculative, experiential and creative approaches to inhabiting the university and
academic work and identities differently - meditations on slow scholarship and theory-building.
See the reference list for examples and ideas. The idea for this special issue emerged during a
series of webinars and online meetings hosted by the Philosophy and Theory in Higher
Education Society during 2022. Find out more about the journal and about PaTHES.
Format for the Abstract Submission
- Include a cover page with authors’ names, affiliations, email addresses.
- An abstract of 500–1000 words that includes the theoretical framework and/or methods and methodology (if appropriate), states the argument and identifies the significance of the issue.
- Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors and, if accepted, authors will be invited to submit a final manuscript.
Format for the Final Submission of the Manuscripts
- Manuscripts should have a minimum of 6000 and maximum of 8000 words.
- Each manuscript will need to include a 250-word abstract and 4–6 keywords.
- Final manuscripts must follow The Chicago Manual of Style, with no in-text parenthetical citations.
- Each manuscript should have a cover page with the authors’ names and affiliations as they will appear in the journal. They should also include a correspondence email for sending the DocuSign form for the Author’s Publication Agreement. Submit proposals directly to the Guest Editors: agnes.bosanquet@mq.edu.au and s.sturm@auckland.ac.nz Please reference “slow academia special issue” in the subject line of your email. Completed manuscripts will be submitted through the journal’s submission platform for review purposes.
Timeline
- Proposals/ abstracts due June 1, 2023
- Authors advised of decision to pursue full manuscript: August 1, 2023
- Submission of full papers due March 1, 2024
- External Reviews conducted and manuscripts returned to authors: May 15, 2024
- Revised manuscripts due July 15, 2024
- Publication April 2025
References
Bali, Maha, and Mia Zamora. “The Equity-Care Matrix: Theory and Practice.” Italian Journal of Educational Technology 30, no. 1 (2022). https://doi.org/10.17471/2499-4324/1241
Barnett, Ronald. The Ecological University: A Feasible Utopia. London: Routledge, 2018.
Bosanquet, Agnes, Lilia Mantai, and Vanessa Fredericks. “Deferred Time in the Neoliberal University: Experiences of Doctoral Candidates and Early Career Academics.” Teaching in Higher Education 25, no. 6 (2020): 736–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2020.1759528
Bosanquet, Agnes. “Details Optional: An Account of Academic Promotion Relative to Opportunity.” Life Writing 18, no. 3 (2021): 429–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2021.1927492
Baraitser, Lisa. Enduring Time. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
Bozalek, Vivienne. “Slow Scholarship in Writing Retreats: A Diffractive Methodology for Response- Able Pedagogies.” South African Journal of Higher Education 31, no. 2 (2017), 40‒57. https://doi.org/10.20853/31-2-1344.
Grant, Barbara. “The Future Is Now: A Thousand Tiny Universities.” Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education 1, no. 3 (2022): 9–28. https://www.peterlang.com/document/1169726.
Grant, Barbara. “‘Going to See’: An Academic Woman Researching her own Kind.” In Lived Experiences of Women in Academia: Metaphors, Manifestos and Memoir, edited by Alison L. Black & Susanne Garvis, 45–54. London: Routledge, 2018.
Hansen, Finn Thorbjørn. “Learning to Innovate in Higher Education Through Deep Wonder.” Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education 1, no. 3, 51–74 (2022). 10.3726/ptihe.2019.03.04
Hansen, Finn Thorbjørn. “The Phenomenology of Wonder in Higher Education.”
In Erziehung: Phänomenologische Perspektiven, edited by Malte Brinkmann, 161–78. Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann, 2011.
Imperiale, Maria Grazia, Alison Phipps, and Giovanna Fassetta. “On Online Practices of Hospitality in Higher Education.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 40, no. 6 (2021): 629–48. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-021-09770-z.
Kelly, Frances. “A Day in the Life (and Death) of a Public University.” Higher Education Research & Development 34, no. 6 (2015): 1153–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2015.1024628.
Kelly, Frances. “The Lecturer’s New Clothes: An Academic Life, in Textiles.” In Lived Experiences of Women in Academia: Metaphors, Manifestos and Memoir, edited by Alison L. Black & Susanne Garvis, 23–31. London: Routledge, 2018.
Kelly, Frances. “‘Hurry up, Please, It’s Time!’ A Psychogeography of a Decommissioned University Campus,” Teaching in Higher Education 25, no. 6 (2020): 722–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2020.1746263.
Longley, Alys, Sean Sturm, and Caroline Yoon. “Kindness as Water in the University,” Knowledge Cultures 9, no. 3 (2021): 184–205. https://doi.org/10.22381/kc93202111.
Mountz, Alison, Anne Bonds, Becky Mansfield, Jenna Loyd, Jennifer Hyndman, Margaret Walton- Roberts, Ranu Basu, Risa Whitson, Roberta Hawkins, Trina Hamilton, and Winifred Curran. “For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance Through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 14, no. 4 (2015): 1235–59. https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1058.
Nørgård, Rikke Toft, and Søren Smedegaard Ernst Bengtsen. “Academic Citizenship beyond the Campus: A Call for the Placeful University.” Higher Education Research & Development 35, no. 1 (2016): 4–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2015.1131669.
Nørgård, Rikke Toft, Claus Toft-Nielsen, and Nicola Whitton. “Playful Learning in Higher Education: Developing a Signature Pedagogy.” International Journal of Play 6, no. 3 (2017): 272–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/21594937.2017.1382997.
Nørgård, Rikke Toft. “Philosophy for the Playful University: Towards a Theoretical Foundation for Playful Higher Education.” In The University Becoming: Perspectives from Philosophy and Social Theory, edited by Søren S. E. Bengtsen, Sarah Robinson, and Wesley Shumar, 141–56. Cham: Springer, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69628-3_10.
Phipps, Alison. “The Sound of Higher Education: Sensuous Epistemologies and the Mess of Knowing.” London Review of Education 5, vol. 1 (2007): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/14748460601045671.
Phipps, Alison, and Tawona Sitholé. “Interrupting the Cognitive Empire: Keynote Drama as Cultural Justice.” Language and Intercultural Communication 22, no. 3 (2022): 391–411. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2022.2039170.
Sturm, Sean, and Stephen Turner. “Life and Death and the University.” Critical Education 11, no. 13 (2020): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.14288/ce.v11i13.186543.
Turner, Stephen, Anna Boswell, Niki Harré, Sean Sturm, Kirsten Locke, and Dominic Da Souza Correa. “The Playable University.” Ephemera: Theory and Politics on Organization 17, no. 3 (2017): 673–690. http://ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/contribution/17- 3turneretal_0.pdf.
Walker, Michelle Boulous. Slow Philosophy. London: Bloomsbury, 2016.