The Unsustainability of the Neoliberal Public University: Towards an Ethnography of Precarity in Academia

Spurred by our concern for the university institution and its increasing dependence on unstable employment contracts, we present possible approaches for future analyses of precarity in the academic world. We emphasise the most invisible aspects of precarity that materialise in the neoliberal practices to which we adhere in our daily lives. Such practices render us—and academia—vulnerable, while transforming academic work into an individual and competitive endeavour. Our goal is to seek other imaginaries for both academia and the university institution, reclaiming its public quality as a common project and questioning its nature.