Who gets the research loot? The challenges of being a postdoctoral fellow in a neoliberal university

Abstract

My thoughts are anthropological, environmental, and geographical in that my family and I find ourselves in new cultural, geographical, and academic surrounds. I have recently moved with partner and 26-month-old daughter to rural New South Wales to take up a three-year postdoctoral research fellowship at a regional university. The fellowship scheme is part of a new initiative to attract fresh talent to this institution, Australia's oldest regional university, an establishment with an already impressive research record. The new fellowship program allows fellows the opportunity to procure more research funds and attract more research status to the university. Such an arrangement should not surprise any of us operating in what can be considered a neoliberal research sector.