Becoming legitimate academic subjects: Doing meaningful work in research administration

Abstract

Professional staff in research administration work closely and collaboratively with academic staff. Examining research administrators’ work provides a point of entry for investigating research culture in the Canadian Academy. We focus on interviews with 19 research administrators from 5 universities within a larger project on the social production of research. We draw on Davies’ theorisation of subjectification to analyse the interviews as sites wherein a research administration subject is produced. We argue this subject is positioned as a legitimate subject through arrival stories characterised as incidental and/or as a strategic move away from precarity, through descriptions of their work as meaningful due to a proximity to research, and through care for academic staff. The research administrator subject strives to gain legitimacy through her proximity to research and through her strategic positioning as ally to academic staff.