Knowledge Commons – UCU Commons

Coming Together to Manage the “Pause”

Photograph of two students sharing a bottle of Coca-Cola at Shimer College in 1941-1942, from the 1942 yearbook of Shimer College.

Here’s a Google Sheet database for all UCU members to share teaching materials with others so as to make the “pause” in action next week more manageable.

Gender Studies in the ‘Starbucks’ University

By: Ruth Holliday Author Note: Ruth Holliday is Professor of Gender and Culture at Leeds University, a Cultural Sociologist, and a UCU NEC representative for the North-East region. Despite the manufactured panic about ‘woke’ subjects like Critical Race Theory and ‘Critical Marxism’ as imagined threats to the free speech of academics everywhere, Gender Studies –Continue reading “Gender Studies in the ‘Starbucks’ University”

Creating Cracks for Collective Care in the Ruins of the University

Fostering collective care involves working together to create opportunities for rediscovering joy in what we do, as a priority need – without this joy, where do we find the necessary reserves to push for better higher education?

#ebooksos: Fighting the Enclosure of the Knowledge Commons

by Ben Purvis The oligopoly of academic publishers is widely recognised as a growing barrier to an open access knowledge commons in the digital age. The discourse typically focuses on academic journals, whose lucrative business model relies on the free labour of editors, reviewers, and authors, with the resultant product sold back to university librariesContinue reading “#ebooksos: Fighting the Enclosure of the Knowledge Commons”