The Impossible Moderation of Pardo-Guerra. A Review of Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra’s The Quantified Scholar. How Research Evaluation Transformed the British Social Sciences

Abstract

Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, a Mexican born scholar with considerable experience of working in the UK, now an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego, takes us on a leisurely stroll along the predicaments of British academia, as subject to periodic evaluations known as the REF (Research Evaluation Framework). Pardo-Guerra’s (2022) book The Quantified Scholar. How Research Evaluation Transformed the British Social Sciences, published by Columbia University Press, asks important questions about how a culture of quantified evaluation has affected the operation of academia and the life of its members in the UK.