9/5/2023 0 Comments Voice candy macSuch interconnections can be noticed all around. People’s lives are now fusions of both analogue and digital technologies and social practices (Jandrić et al. 2018) offers one, not entirely perfect, but with room for discussion route, towards understanding also that Covid-19 does not sit apart from other global and local challenges, such as developing creative skills across populations to contend with automation, change, unemployment and opportunity in a 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) (Peters et al. Now is therefore an important time to ‘voice’ the essential part that regional universities play in connecting global technological and biological change, with local social projects, citizens and industry. Yet simultaneously, this crisis reveals the crucial role that local communities play in any national or global efforts to fight a spiralling pandemic. The biological work of this pandemic intermingles with technological communications and social activities to materially and emotionally alter each of our lives.Īt this point in time then, when the global economy and heathcare worldwide reel from the pressures of Covid-19, we are moving even more rapidly away from face-to-face meetings by necessity. Whilst the arguments that we share about audible, place-based debate remain highly relevant, a further layer of complexity now unfolds before us. Now, as we publish our thoughts on the necessity for live face-to-face debate from regional universities unprecedented measures to resist the spread of Covid-19 mean that ‘virtual’ is literally all that we have left. The MHEPN debates were intended as a powerful, place-based forum to hear regional voices that seem to be virtually silenced by the generic structure of national policy frameworks focused on ‘measuring excellence’. Each author also participated in the Higher Education Institutional Research (HEIR) Conference, held at the University of Wolverhampton in September 2019, with the theme of ‘measuring excellence’ in Higher Education. Each of the authors of this paper has presented at and chaired a series of Midlands HE Policy Network (MHEPN) debates that we recently developed and hosted through the Education Observatory, University of Wolverhampton. When we first began drafting this article, we wanted to raise our collective dissatisfaction that live debate in universities has all but disappeared. Postdigital theory offers one route to understanding that Covid-19 does not sit apart from other political economic challenges in HE and beyond, that we need to debate simultaneously. We may not currently be able to convene our Midlands HE Policy Network (MHEPN) debates in person, but we can voice the essential part that regional universities play in connecting global technological and biological change, with local social projects, citizens and industry. We therefore draw on a postdigital perspective, as we share our individual dialogues in support of debate, via collective writing, against this new backdrop of social distancing and widespread uncertainty. Yet even as we compiled this article about HE debate, the Covid-19 pandemic took hold globally, cancelling face-to-face meetings, by necessity. In response, we point to the value of live, place-based debate in HE institutions to highlight distributional inequity, raise local voices and connect these with national policy. This furthers a territorially agnostic discourse about universities, downplays institutional history and purpose, risks concealing innovative practices, and fails to tackle entrenched inequalities. As agendas for data-driven measures of excellence dominate policy in UK Higher Education (HE), we argue that the generic structure of national policy frameworks virtually silences regional voices.
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