Negative ‘marking’? University research administrators and the contestation of moral exclusion

Abstract

With the exception of academics, occupational groups within universities remain relatively under‐researched. Based upon qualitative interviews with 27 research administrators in 19 UK universities, this article reports on a small‐scale qualitative project to investigate the workday worlds of these ‘boundary‐crossing’ and ‘occupationally hybrid’ staff. The article focuses specifically upon the organisational constraints imposed upon research administrators in terms of what has been termed ‘moral exclusion’ in the form of: negative labelling, rendering invisible, and stigmatising and blaming. The ways in which research administrators used their social agency determinedly to contest such exclusion and negative labelling are also portrayed. The article concludes with a discussion of the occupational social space offered by this particular role, which many interviewees recounted as being highly positive.

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