The work of an academic today is disproportionately defined by the imperative to publish. This is true to the point of platitude, and there is no shortage of good writing examining this condition of the academic as publication enterprise. For better or worse, the experience of publishing one’s work allows for a pretty close view […]
Category: Research funding
In Projects we Trust
When I was a child in communist Romania, the butt of many jokes was the government’s five-year plans. The cincinal (from cinci, meaning five in Romanian) was always accomplished in four years and a half, and the initial production goals were always surpassed. This of course had no relation whatsoever with reality. The 1980s that […]
Learning to Speak
Several months ago, my research funding body sent out an e-mail offering travel grants for the upcoming ESOF 2016 conference (EuroScience Open Forum), held this year in Manchester, UK. Being myself a product of the transformation of academic research into a market, I applied without really knowing what I applied for. The market scarcity imposed […]
The Civil Animal 