A symposium on postdigitial solidarity in research evaluation: 16 January 2025

An invitation to a symposium on postdigitial solidarity in research evaluation 16 January 2025, 10.30-12.00 am Warsaw time (9.30 – 11.00 am UK time) online (Teams)

Dear Colleagues

You are warmly invited to this international symposium hosted by the University of Warsaw (Poland), Zagreb University of Applied Sciences (Croatia) and Bath Spa University (UK) titled:

Research evaluation, stratification of researchers and postdigital solidarity in international contexts

Thursday 16 January 2025, 9.30 – 11.00 am (UK time) online (Teams)

Chaired by: Prof John Strachan, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise) and Dean of the Graduate College, Bath Spa University, UK

Research evaluation is an essential, and often taken-for-granted, activity in many international contexts. Ostensibly aimed at improving the quality of research generated at universities, research evaluation leads to a host of consequences, desirable as well as undesirable. This symposium posits one of these consequences, the stratification of research and researchers, as worthy of closer scrutiny. Evaluation systems such as the star rating of research ‘outputs’ in the UK and the ministry-approved ranking of academic journals in Poland, are used to sift, sort and stratify research publications and their authors, subsequently feeding into university rankings, national and global, and related research funding. Within this stratified system, researchers collaborate but also compete, enticed into comparison and quantification of their scholarship by the ranking technologies available outside of institutional evaluation, Google Scholar metrics and ScholarGPS.

Is there any room in this system, enhanced by the digital technologies and shaped by the datafication characteristic of the postdigital times, for academic forms of association underpinned by solidarity? Taking a postdigital perspective on the stratification of research and researchers arising from research evaluation in several international contexts, this symposium will focus on the following questions:

How are the rationales for research evaluation framed in different international contexts?
Who designs research evaluation?
What should not be taken-for-granted in research evaluation?
What is the role of digital technologies in the evaluation of research and researchers?
Are there possibilities for ‘solidarity’ in a stratified, and stratifying, system?

Please confirm your attendance by emailing Alicia Townsend at: education.admin@bathspa.ac.uk

We look forward to seeing you on the 16th January.

Sarah Hayes, Rafał Godoń, Petar Jandrić and Agnieszka Bates