TY - JOUR
T1 - Living and Working Research Policies
T2 - The Case of International Scholars in Latvia
AU - Puzo, Ieva
N1 - Funding Information:
Katrina’s narrative complements this view. Katrina has also been living in Latvia for several years. Like many other scholars in Latvian higher education and research institutions, she is on the look-out for grant opportunities to supplement her baseline salary. She has been applying for grants funded and managed by Latvian government institutions as well. Like most international researchers in the country, Katrina speaks several languages, including some Latvian; but, her Latvian language skills are no match for the grant application system. When discussing this topic, Katrina told me: You have to fill in some forms online in Latvian. But, again, I get a lot of help from my colleagues in my group. I’m sending to them things in English, and they translate them into Latvian, or I’m trying to translate into Latvian and then they correct my mistakes, so, yeah. (…) The forms are in English, but the online form, there is something in Latvian, like, an abstract, or, like, how this project is going to affect Latvia, why it is good for the country. All this stuff is in Latvian. And the form itself is in Latvian. So, for example, the financial part, you have to know where to put what, and also I’m getting a lot of help from my colleagues, because, again, I have no clue. .. I know that the evaluators are foreigners, so obviously they need everything in English, but why we need this part in Latvian, I don’t know. I mean, as long as I have somebody to help me, then it’s okay.
Publisher Copyright:
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PY - 2023/2/20
Y1 - 2023/2/20
N2 - The article examines the incorporation of international scholars into the Latvian higher education and research system from the perspective of labour. Whilst recent research policies in the country are aimed at increasing international cooperation to situate Latvia within the global regimes of knowledge production, the number of international researchers in Latvia remains low. Based on ethnographic research, I suggest that this is at least partially because of the largely invisible work that both international researchers in the country and their local counterparts have to perform to bridge the gap between policy dreams and structural realities. In conversation with scholarship on academic precarity and through the lens of interpretive and infrastructural labour, this article shows how the task of ‘internationalising’ knowledge production in Latvia is entrusted to individual local researchers, whilst international scholars face a multitude of uncertainties regarding their work lives and their presence in the country in general.
AB - The article examines the incorporation of international scholars into the Latvian higher education and research system from the perspective of labour. Whilst recent research policies in the country are aimed at increasing international cooperation to situate Latvia within the global regimes of knowledge production, the number of international researchers in Latvia remains low. Based on ethnographic research, I suggest that this is at least partially because of the largely invisible work that both international researchers in the country and their local counterparts have to perform to bridge the gap between policy dreams and structural realities. In conversation with scholarship on academic precarity and through the lens of interpretive and infrastructural labour, this article shows how the task of ‘internationalising’ knowledge production in Latvia is entrusted to individual local researchers, whilst international scholars face a multitude of uncertainties regarding their work lives and their presence in the country in general.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85151864130&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.30676/jfas.112530
DO - 10.30676/jfas.112530
M3 - Article
SN - 0355-3930
VL - 47
SP - 31
EP - 51
JO - Suomen Antropologi
JF - Suomen Antropologi
IS - 1
ER -