scholarly journals The tragedy of the emeritus and the fates of anatomical collections: Alfred Benninghoff's memoir of Ferdinand Count Spee

BJHS Themes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 169-194
Author(s):  
NICK HOPWOOD
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
Physiological Anatomy ◽  
Significant Period ◽  
The University ◽  
Microscope Slides

AbstractRetirement can be a significant period in modern academic careers, and emeritus professors have shaped the fates of collections in departments and disciplines. This is evidenced by reconstructing the meanings of Alfred Benninghoff's remarkable memoir of Ferdinand Count Spee, sometime director of the anatomical institute in the University of Kiel. Thematizing the ‘tragedy’ of the emeritus, Benninghoff's 1944 article recalls his predecessor's possessive interactions with his collections as these approached assorted endings. With nostalgia and humour, it places the old aristocrat physically, intellectually and emotionally in a building that bombing would soon destroy. Benninghoff's Spee retained control over the microscope slides with which he engaged colleagues in conversations about research in embryology and physiological anatomy. He lost authority over the teaching charts and wet preparations, but still said a long farewell to these things; he tried, like a conductor alone after a concert, to recapture an experience he had once shared. The elegy is interpreted as apologetic about anatomy under National Socialism, and as offering a model of collegiality. It illustrates how collections have mediated relations between scientific generations at the end of a career.

scholarly journals Internally Incentivized Interdisciplinarity: Organizational Restructuring of Research and Emerging Tensions

Minerva ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikko Salmela ◽  
Miles MacLeod ◽  
Johan Munck af Rosenschöld
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Interdisciplinary Collaboration ◽  
Scientific Output ◽  
Green Technology ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
Organizational Restructuring ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The University ◽  
Internal Funding

AbstractInterdisciplinarity is widely considered necessary to solving many contemporary problems, and new funding structures and instruments have been created to encourage interdisciplinary research at universities. In this article, we study a small technical university specializing in green technology which implemented a strategy aimed at promoting and developing interdisciplinary collaboration. It did so by reallocating its internal research funds for at least five years to “research platforms” that required researchers from at least two of the three schools within the university to participate. Using data from semi-structured interviews from researchers in three of these platforms, we identify specific tensions that the strategy has generated in this case: (1) in the allocation of platform resources, (2) in the division of labor and disciplinary relations, (3) in choices over scientific output and academic careers. We further show how the particular platform format exacerbates the identified tensions in our case. We suggest that certain features of the current platform policy incentivize shallow interdisciplinary interactions, highlighting potential limits on the value of attempting to push for interdisciplinarity through internal funding.

The Single Most Consequential Thing We Do in Universities

2013 ◽  
pp. 304-329
Author(s):  
Grant Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
Important Thing ◽  
Constructive Alignment ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Manchester ◽  
Giving Feedback

Assessing students (including giving feedback and making decisions based on assessments) is arguably the single most important thing done in universities in terms of tangible impacts on people’s lives, but assessment is hard to do. Academics are seldom trained in assessment, and for many it is the most worrying aspect of the job. The University of Manchester operates a New Academics Programme for its probationary lecturers, running over three years and encompassing research, teaching, and administrative aspects of academic careers, culminating in a reflective portfolio. This case study describes the introduction of an assessment component into this programme, including its motivation, content, implementation, and evolution, and its reception by the new academics. The assessment component of the New Academics Programme is now delivered in two sessions at different times of the year. The first covers the importance of assessment and gives guidance for designing good assessments and giving feedback. The second session goes more deeply into constructive alignment and learning outcomes, leading on to decision making in exam boards, and ending with a focus on cultivating academic judgement.

scholarly journals The Russians Are Coming! Russian Professors at the Faculty of Technical Sciences of the University of Ljubljana in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

Monitor ISH ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-108
Author(s):  
Željko Oset
Keyword(s):  
Faculty Member ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
Track Record ◽  
Research Track ◽  
Excellent Research ◽  
Organizational Experience ◽  
State Pension ◽  
The University

The newly established University of Ljubljana (1919) sought to attract scholars possessing organizational experience and an excellent research track record, who would be at the same time willing to work in modest research conditions. The requirements were the same for all candidates, but preference was given to candidates of Slovenian or Czech descent. A warm welcome was extended to renowned Russian emigrant professors with outstanding organizational experience. As was the case at the University of Belgrade, the largest share of these professors gained employment at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, In the years 1920 and 1921, many Russian candidates expressed an interest in coming but encountered problems when submitting proper official documents. Despite the fact that most applications were sent by younger candidates at the beginning of their academic careers, it was thus scholars in their forties and fifties who had more success obtaining faculty member status. An important step in their careers was the acquisition of citizenship, a prerequisite for tenure and consequently for any university function or state pension.

Wykładowcy prawa rzymskiego w Oksfordzie i w Cambridge w XVIII wieku

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-104
Author(s):  
Łukasz Jan Korporowicz
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
University Education ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Social Prestige ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
The University

The article contains characteristics of the fourteen professors who gained their appointment to the Regius Chair of Civil Law in Oxford and Cambridge in the 18th century. Their academic careers as well as their many out-of-academia duties are described in the article. The analyses of the collected materials allowed the author to assert that the condition of teaching Roman law in the 18th-century England resembled the general crises of the university education in England in the aforementioned epoch. For most of the lecturers the academic posts were more or less sinecures that provided a social prestige and honourable social position. Only the late 18th century brought some changes in the methods of teaching Roman law and in the appointments of the professors. To a fuller extent these changes could not be observed to bring expected effects before the mid-19th century.

scholarly journals The NSERC Program of University Research Fellowships

1987 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-77
Author(s):  
Robert J. Kavanagh
Keyword(s):  
Research Council ◽  
Age Distribution ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Faculty Members ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
University Research ◽  
Doctoral Degrees ◽  
Canadian Universities ◽  
Engineering Research ◽  
The University

In the mid-1970s several analyses warned of an impending crisis in Canadian universities resulting from the age distribution of faculty members and anticipated trends in student enrolments. It was feared that many young Canadians with new doctoral degrees would be unable to enter academic careers and that the universities would suffer from a lack of young research-oriented faculty members. This paper describes the University Research Fellowships program which was introduced by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in 1980 as a response to this situation. The steps leading up to the launching of the program, the experience with this program to date, and its impact upon the universities are described. Finally, the Council's plans for the future of this program are discussed.

scholarly journals Academic Faculty Wives and Systemic Discrimination —Antinepotism and "Inbreeding"

1993 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Anne Innis Dagg
Keyword(s):  
Academic Careers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Academic Faculty ◽  
Systemic Discrimination ◽  
The University ◽  
Sizable Number

In the past, the academic careers of women married to professors have often been disadvantaged by anti-nepotism rules in universities and by informal department policies against hiring one's own Ph.D. graduates. To determine if these two systemic forms of discrimination, which especially affect faculty wives, are still operating, a study was made at a large university, the University of Waterloo. UW calendars show that some departments have hired academic spouses and many have hired their own Ph.D.s; however, a survey of UW professors indicates that a sizable number are against hiring spouses in a department and against a department hiring its own Ph.D.s. There is still cause for concern, therefore, if a university wants to hire the best candidate for a position and she happens to be a faculty wife.

Logical positivism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Mathematical Techniques ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
The University

Logical positivism (logical empiricism, neo-positivism) originated in Austria and Germany in the 1920s. Inspired by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century revolutions in logic, mathematics and mathematical physics, it aimed to create a similarly revolutionary scientific philosophy purged of the endless controversies of traditional metaphysics. Its most important representatives were members of the Vienna Circle who gathered around Moritz Schlick at the University of Vienna (including Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Kurt Gödel, Hans Hahn, Karl Menger, Otto Neurath and Friedrich Waismann) and those of the Society for Empirical Philosophy who gathered around Hans Reichenbach at the University of Berlin (including Walter Dubislav, Kurt Grelling and Carl Hempel). Although not officially members of either group, the Austrian philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper were, at least for a time, closely associated with logical positivism. The logical positivist movement reached its apogee in Europe in the years 1928–34, but the rise of National Socialism in 1933 marked the effective end of this phase. Thereafter, however, many of its most important representatives emigrated to the USA. Here logical positivism found a receptive audience among such pragmatically, empirically and logically minded American philosophers as Charles Morris, Ernest Nagel and W.V. Quine. Thus transplanted to the English-speaking world of ‘analytic’ philosophy it exerted a tremendous influence – particularly in philosophy of science and the application of logical and mathematical techniques to philosophical problems more generally. This influence began to wane around 1960, with the rise of a pragmatic form of naturalism due to Quine and a historical-sociological approach to the philosophy of science due mainly to Thomas Kuhn. Both of these later trends, however, developed in explicit reaction to the philosophy of logical positivism and thereby attest to its enduring significance.

Reconstructing the University

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-41
Author(s):  
Keith Tribe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
University Research ◽  
Component Part ◽  
London School ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
London School Of Economics ◽  
The University

The ‘modern university’—research-based, in which teaching and research are pursued by academic specialists organised departmentally—was created in the United States in the later nineteenth century in a productive misunderstanding of the organisation of knowledge and teaching in contemporary German universities. While the latter enjoyed international recognition, academic careers remained in thrall to an apprenticeship structure in which senior staff represented their entire discipline, supported by their juniors. The American structure, fostered by endowments and grants, presumed that departments would be composed of specialists who advanced their careers by developing their specialism. This was decisive for the disciplinary development of universities around the world. In London, the university was a federal, administrative body whose degree courses could be followed both within Britain and in the wider Empire. As a component part of this structure, the London School of Economics shared in this reach, and so came to dominate the teaching of the social sciences in Britain and the Empire.

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