IGDORE and the Ronin Institute have been working together to on the Unconference planning and we are happy to share the:
Scholarship Values Summit: Creating healthier and more equitable systems that support scholarship
Goal
Identifying the harmful scholarship-related systems that no longer work for us as scholars, and defining the values to help us create new systems that are healthier and more supportive of our goals as scholars. Specifically:
- Identify the scholarship-related systems and actions (education, research, mentorship, publishing, etc.) that scholars participate in that lead to exploitation and harm
- Define and propose a set of values for scholarship that can help scholars begin to extract themselves from exploitative and harmful systems, and engage in efforts to develop new systems for scholarship that align better with our values and our current socioeconomic and environmental context.
- Develop strategies for communicating and normalizing these stated values and suggested new systems.
Background & Approach
The context for scholarship has changed. The cultural norms and incentives for scholarship today were established during a now-outdated context for traditional academia. Such framing and assumptions no longer work in today’s mainstream academia, let alone among the growing numbers of independent scholars and researchers that operate under different incentives, motivations, and business models.
The Unconference is being co-organized by the Ronin Institute and IGDORE. The diverse backgrounds of scholars at IGDORE and the Ronin Institute and their broader communities can provide perspectives that are relevant to a wide range of scholarship scenarios, from those working independently to those at brick-and-mortar universities. As a community we can move towards better systems for scholarship by first defining the core values that underpin scholarship (the goal of this unconference).
The structure of the Unconference hasn’t yet been finalized, but it is likely to involve a series of small-group discussion stages, each focused on one of the objectives above. Either during those stages or during a final round of synthesis, groups will also focus on the creation of written or visual calls to action that participants can use to communicate their Unconference experience to their networks.
More details to be announced soon (the date will probably be late August). But until then please provide your feedback:
- Would you be interested in attending this unconference?
- What do you think of the theme?
- Feel free to also share your reflections, ideas, and comments!