The Complex Systems Laboratory both supports and practices Slow Scholarship, a movement developed by Feminist Scholars in response to the emphasis on productivity, deliverables and rapid progress that characterize the neoliberal university. Instead, Slow Scholarship emphasizes carving out the time and space to
(1) research, think, critically analyze and communicate deeply about issues of academic and societal interest;
(2) teach students to deliberately and critically engage with topics rather than accumulating facts, methods and skills;
(3) develop a Feminist ethics of care that prioritizes well-being and collaboration over competition and burn-out.
Slow Scholarship is not an individual decision, but rather a collective movement (which some critics, embedded in a individualizing culture, fail to recognize when they oppose Slow Scholarship as the practice of a privileged elite). In that sense, a prime obligation of practitioners of Slow Scholarship is to both serve as an example and (more importantly) carve out spaces for beginning scholars to practice Slow Scholarship in the neoliberal academy.
In a complexity sense, the critique of the neoliberal university that forms the heart of Slow Scholarship is a critique about low levels of dissipation in scholarly pursuits, teaching and university administration, which suppresses development of enduring relationships with knowledge and a relationality among colleagues, students and staff that transcends transactionalism.
Check out these Slow Scholarship Resources:
• Slow Scholarship: A Manifesto
• Karkov, Catherine E., ed. (2019) Slow Scholarship: Medieval Research and the Neoliberal University. Boydell & Brewer.
• Isabelle Stengers (2018) Another Science is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science, Polity Press.