Marija Brajdić Vuković, PhD held a keynote lecture at the conference 'Performance in Higher Education and Beyond: Rethinking norms' organized by the Academy of Dramatic Art

Marija Brajdić Vuković, PhD held a keynote lecture at the conference DO WE EVEN KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON? Performance in Higher Education and Beyond: Rethinking norms - International Transdisciplinary Conference. The conference was organized by the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb.

The lecture titled: “The Erosion of Identity in the Academia as a Sign of the (Coming) Times“, which was presented, is based on two papers written as part of the CSF project RESETH “Social Responsibility and Professional Ethics of Croatian Researchers“. Along with presenting the two papers, Marija discussed the possible direction of changes in science in the context of greater social responsibility.

Summary of the lecture:
This talk examines how academics navigate tensions between social responsibility and institutional pressures, exploring the impact of these dynamics on their professional identities. Drawing on Latour’s (2004) concept of ‘matters of concern' over ‘matters of fact’ and Stengers’ (2017) advocacy for a science with ‘public intelligence,’ we propose that academics’ identities are also shaped by their engagement with social and community concerns. However, managerial pressures such as workload demands often lead to resistance—especially among experienced academics whose established identities may conflict with bureaucratic expectations. This talk is based on a project that explores these dynamics through the lenses of infrastructural inertia, collective ethics, and constitutive impurity (Shotwell, 2012). We argue that embracing complexity and complicity can provide a way forward, offering opportunities to create ‘life-promoting patches’ (Tsing, 2015), and contribute meaningfully to a warming world’s pressing ‘matters of concern.’ By discussing how academics reconcile these tensions, the aim is to propose pathways for fostering ethical, engaged academic practice in challenging times.