Building the Post-Pandemic University

Imagining, Contesting and Materializing Higher Education Futures

Edited by Mark A. Carrigan, Lecturer, Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK, Hannah Moscovitz, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark, Michele Martini, Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society, University of Lugano, Switzerland and Susan L. Robertson, Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK

This timely book offers a detailed, multidisciplinary view on the radical changes in higher education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Chapters carefully investigate how the pandemic led to massive disruption in the sector, examining the contentious politics involved and various managerial and policy changes that stemmed from this unprecedented crisis.

“哇!Carrigan Moscovitz, Martini and Robertson have gone straight to the cutting edge. Starting from the down curve of the pandemic and with a close eye on the digital, they take us all the way through the algorithmic academy and out the other side. Never has the neoliberal university looked more dated and inadequate; and these chapters show that while post-truth conspiracies, ecological blindness, platform capitalists and big five publishers loom ever larger the potentials of knowledge socialism are continuing and irrepressible. As Michael Peters says in his foreword, “there is always the contestation, dissent, and creative appropriation of technology that keeps the idea of the university alive.”’
– Simon Marginson, University of Oxford, UK

‘Building the Post-Pandemic University is one of those rare scholarly achievements consolidated at a time of considerable transformation both in global political cultures and in the way we comprehend “crises” in and through Higher Education (HE). How are universities meant to re-imagine and respond to multiple political crises, both manufactured and real, and most particularly after a global pandemic? This collection, edited by a very fine set of transdisciplinary scholars seeking to comprehend HE, crises and transformation, represents a one of a kind account of the university seeking to rebuild itself in the face of a global pandemic. Its many contributions sound out the complexity of such an unexpected task and elicit creative scholarly ways to imagine such a thing called the post-pandemic university. It is timely, absorbing and provides a genuine contribution to Sociology, the Humanities, the Arts and to all those interested in how to comprehend the very notion of a university in a post-pandemic world. This book will not disappoint.’
– Jo-Anne Dillabough, University of Cambridge, UK

‘This book is as important as it is timely. For higher education sectors to move forwards – and take their workforces along with them - the contours and legacies of the pandemic need to be much better understood. The contributors to this sensitively curated volume bring insight and evidence about what really happened to higher learning during Covid. The collection is more than the sum of its chapters; it goes beyond critique to offer a shared blueprint for what might come next. The neoliberal university embraces individualism and entrepreneurialism in the name of competition; this collection prompts us to advocate for a new settlement based on fairer and more humane values.’
– Steven Jones, University of Manchester, UK