Contradiction Studies

Breaking) Barriers in Academia: Mapping the Field

Sonja Drobnic (SOCIUM, U Bremen), Dora Simunovic (BIGSSS, U Bremen) Nelson Sindze Wembe (RTG Contradiction Studies & BIGSSS U Bremen) & Lisa Spanka (Equal Opportunities Office, U Bremen)

06/13/2023 1:00 pm 3:00 pm

BIGSSS, Konferenzraum, Mary Somerville Str. 7 (UNICOM Building, 3rd Floor)

Part of the lecture series NAVIGATING ACADEMIA organized by BIGSSS & the RTG Contradiction Studies

The dominant understanding of academia assumes that beneficial participation for all involved (students, early career researchers, academic staff…) is based primarily on the ability to make a valuable intellectual contribution to research. In reality, however, universities – and higher education as a whole – are complex social systems in which the agency and access of each individual is determined in multiple ways, including by gender, ethnicity, social class, and health status. These determinations can create powerful cultural and social barriers and inequalities. In the panel discussion “(Breaking) Barriers in Science: Mapping the Field,” we will try to overcome the taboo of not addressing them, identify the most common types of barriers, consider strategies for addressing them, and narrow down the future content of our Navigating Academia series.

Discussants

Prof. Dr. Sonja Drobnic SOCIUM | U Bremen

Dr. Dora Simunovic BIGSSS | U Bremen

Nelson Sindze Wembe | RTG Contradiction Studies & BIGSSS | U Bremen

Dr. Lisa Spanka Equal Opportunities Office | U Bremen

Moderated by
Dr. Christian Peters BIGSSS | U Bremen

Back to overview
power and resistance

“Michel Foucault says: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and […] this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (History of Sexuality I, The Will to Knowledge, 1976, p. 95)”

Gisela Febel
paradox

“The basis of law is not an idea as a systematic unified principle but a paradox.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
hierarchy of norms

“If social contradictions are reflected in law, law cannot form a hierarchy of norms free of contradictions.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
prison of difference

“‘Contradiction is the prison of difference‘ writes the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Worlds of Contradiction asks: how can we explain and describe the world without making it more coherent and systematic than it is?”

Michi Knecht
relational

“At first I thought contradiction was always a relational thing; but the more I ponder it, the more I think contradiction creates relation.”

Ingo H. Warnke