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Grants

Principal Investigator

ONGOING

Origins and development of peripheral academic capitalism in Poland (1990-2021)

The project will collect extensive data on the capitalist reality of Polish science and higher education and how it works, which will furnish the basis for a new theory of peripheral academic capitalism. We will present the main actors and narratives responsible for the shape that academic capitalism has taken in Poland. We will look into the public policies that aimed to transform the sector into a robust system of academic capitalism, determine who was responsible for the discourses developed within it, and how these were shaped by international organizations such as the OECD or the World Bank. We will analyse the resistance with which these changes were met among students and academics and the role of private capital, concentrated mainly in the sector of large commercial academic publishers, in shaping its current form. Last, but not least, we will analyse to what extent and why the form of academic capitalism that emerged in Poland differs from the one present in the countries that are at the centre of the capitalist world-system. The project will allow us to step beyond the unproductive dichotomy of modern debates on sector transformation, which often pits liberal modernisers, who want to copy ready-made solutions from central countries, against conservatives, who oppose the subordination of “Polish science” to Western models.

COMPLETED

The public good and the common good in the context of the functioning of Polish system of science and higher education in comparison with other national systems national systems (2019-2020)

Investigator in other grants

  • Evaluation Game in Academia (2017–2023)
  • European Universities – Critical Futures (2018–2023)
  • Brexit and higher education in the UK and Europe: Towards a cross – country investigation (2017–2018)
  • Europe’s flagship universities: in search of a balance between academic excellence and commitments to society and the economy (FLAGSHIP) (2014–2018)