Knowledge production outside the university at #undisciplining

By Mark Carrigan

I’m writing this from the Undisciplining conference, an event I’ve contributed to the organisation of as part of my role at The Sociological Review Foundation. An event is about to start organised by my CPGJ colleague and collaborator, Jana Bacevic, prepared through an initial blog post on this website.

Her session on thinking knowledge production without the university clearly relates to our work in the cluster but is taking place outside of higher education. This is a conference organised by a charitable foundation, held in an art gallery and cultural space, seeking to break with traditional forms of academic organisation. Its origin reflects the ambivalence found in seeking an outside to the university, while framing the ambition in a way so idiosyncratically marked by being on the inside. It is outside yet concerned with the inside, dependent upon it yet struggling to move beyond it.

This tension is something we have to negotiate if we are going to find practical ways to facilitate knowledge production outside of the university, beyond the existing epistemic infrastructure of commercial, governmental and third sector activity. If we don’t confront it our attempts to find spaces outside of the university risk being failed escape attempts rather than projects to construct viable spaces that constitute a real alternative to the contemporary institutionalisation of the social sciences.