This should be of interest to just about everyone reading this blog since it addresses the changing nature of the university and the increasingly precarious nature of academic labour. It would be great to see as many of you there as possible, and at the subsequent events around this theme …

Toxic Positivity in the University!

Feeling grateful, lucky and hopeful when that umpteenth funding bid proves successful or your temporary contract is extended by another year are only some of the more positive emotional responses one encounters in academia today. However, when contextualised within the broader culture of overwork, precarity and rising mental ill-health, all nurtured by an institution that often ignores or actively downplays its reality, these individual moments of positivity might be understood as having a somewhat ‘toxic’ quality.

Toxic Positivity in the University (TP@U) is a series of three lectures and a workshop that aims to turn this institutional narrative of positivity, well-being, and self-care on its head. This is not only to provide a more sober view of academia, but also to open up a space for thinking through a set of counter-institutional practices and tactics that have the potential of subverting, however slightly, the increasing acceleration and exploitation in the neoliberal university.

The first of our three speakers is Jana Bacevic who will be talking about the politics of well-being in the neoliberal university.  This FREE event takes place on 24th April 2019 from 5-7pm in A19 in theTrent Building at University of Nottingham.  To register your place for this and all three events head to our Eventbrite page or simply turn up on the day.

Dave Young, Ivan Markovic and Abi Rhodes (The Centre for Critical Theory)