The realities of academic life – more than research and teaching … and incredibly difficult with short-term funding/contracts
For Mary Evans, centennial professor at LSE’s Gender Institute, the rewards of fully engaging in these diverse areas of academic life have been personal and political. “For many women of my generation it was very important to construct networks within the academy, hence motivation for ‘citizenship’ was very much about establishing a ‘voice’,” she says, adding that “building friendships through work as a ‘citizen’ is a huge help in limiting that sense of isolation that is part and parcel of being an academic”.
Susan Bassnett, professor of comparative literature at the University of Warwick, outlines her “citizenship” workload in the first half of 2015: “I have three PhDs to examine, only one in the UK; an appointing committee overseas; three meetings of projects on whose advisory board I serve; two plenary lectures abroad and a week-long workshop in Italy; plus reviewing for journals, funding bodies, references, etc.”
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