Non-human policy worlds: an exploration of the Norwegian research and higher education policy

Academia is increasingly populated but remains saturated with problems of exclusion, inequality, and injustice. However, policies aimed to govern the sector are criticized for corrupting the core of the academic practice, overlooking complexities, and perpetuating old and constructing new forms of inequalities. We thus need more empowering ways to design policies which can productively transform academia into good spaces to inhabit. To this end, we take a novel approach by viewing higher education policies as world-making spaces. Through ‘social world/arena mapping’ of the Norwegian research and higher education policy, we find that the policy articulates diverse worlds with different logics and purposes for academics to inhabit. However, the actors in these worlds remain passive, and seemingly ‘universal’ actors, able to simultaneously inhabit all the different policy worlds, while systemic inequalities which permeate the sector are largely overlooked. We argue that acknowledging this shortcoming is pivotal to finding new ways to (re)create sustainable spaces in research and higher education that ensure inclusive environments and function as democratic institutions.