PhD A.M.R. (Anne) Slootweg

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation: 

This dissertation is an ethnographic account of practices of research evaluation at Dutch university departments, with a focus on the 2017 research assessment of law and the 2019 research assessment of philosophy as case studies. My central aim is to trace how practices of evaluation are constitutive of the very notions, objects, and comparative arrangements - 'quality', 'relevance', 'department', 'discipline', 'science' and 'society' - through which evaluation gets done in academic capitalism. The main question I explore is: how do practices of research evaluation enable the university, as a conjuncture of departments and disciplines, and an institute of power hinging on these competitive arrangements, to be continued? Attending to evaluation as a thoroughly affective and often utterly ironic practice, this dissertation unfolds how evaluation allows the western(ized) university to get performed as dedicated to quality and impact, while simultaneously evading answerability. More precisely, I show how the apparent normality of academic infrastructure with its departments and disciplines that are in competition over 'quality' and 'relevance to society', is deeply entangled with constellations of affective investments that can be understood as academic whiteness.