The Toxic Academy and the Broken Academic

[Simon Warren]

I am writing about the experience of mental illness in higher education.  Below I have a number of links to my blog where I share some of the work-in-progress.  Wherever I have presented this or discussed it I have received a massive response.  Also, recently I have come across discussions around the 'Slow University' (http://myweb.lmu.edu/btreanor/Slow_University.html), 'Slow Science' (http://slow-science.org/) - both different ways to regain control over our work and ourselves and to refuse the offer of the 'fast society'.

This reminds me of a brilliant paper by Irish academic Kathleen Lynch (http://www.gender-studies.leeds.ac.uk/assets/files/Events/GenderAct...) where she examines the historical basis for 'careless' behaviour in higher education, locating it not just in the more recent phenomenon of managerialism but in the very fabric of the university and the division between the rational and the affective.

http://wp.me/p494Ww-C

http://wp.me/p494Ww-u

[Jill Anderson]

Welcome to the mhhehub Simon and many thanks for posting this.  It looks extremely interesting, and am looking forward to following the links.  I've created a collection of links on bundlr - on wellbeing and academia - which may be of interest too.

[DINA POURSANIDOU]

Hi, Simon. Very pleased to see you as a member of the mhhehub. My name is Dina Poursanidou and I am a researcher in Manchester University in England.I came across your blog and your work recently as I was looking at information about and abstracts at the Academic Identities conference in Durham on 9th July. I was particularly interested in your abstract for your paper 'Writing of the heart: Autoethnography as subversive story telling'. I see that you are writing about the experience of mental illness in higher education. I have been working with autoethnography in the last 3 years writing about my experience of re-entering academia as a mental health service user and academic following a severe and enduring mental health crisis that lasted 2 years (I became very depressed whilst in a research post in the north of England and I am writing about the identity and other struggles implicated in returning to academia as a service user researcher). I would be very interested in talking further with you about autoethnography. my email address is [e-mail]. it would be great to talk further if you wish so too. I have a blog if you were interested in having a look -  Dina's Blog on Asylum, the Magazine for Democratic Psychiatry (http://www.asylumonline.net/dinas-blog). Finally, I did a paper at the Troubling Narratives: Identity Matters conference in Huddersfield University recently where I talked about my use of autoethnography. Attaching the link to this paper here (http://troublingnarratives.wordpress.com/talks/) (Dina Poursanidou (University of Manchester): Negotiating unsettled and unsettling identities: How can we respond...?) so you can see where i am coming from. it would be great to hear from you so that I could get to know more about your work with autoethnography and I could share my struggles with it too.

Regards

Dina Poursanidou