Disciplining academic women: gender restructuring and the labour of research in Australian universities

This chapter examines the ‘gendered nature of the social organisation of researchand scientific knowledge production’ and in particular the gendered nature ofthe corporatisation of higher education (Knorr-Cetina 1999, 9). It argues that theconditions of labour of the entrepreneurial university and underlying market-oriented instrumentalism has changed the nature of the relationship of highereducation with the public, with the individual student and the academic, inways that are gendered. ‘Markets do not make social distinctions disappear,they regulate interaction between institutions e.g. families and education, and“instrumentalist” status distinctions, bending pre-existing cultural value tocapitalist purposes’ (Fraser and Honneth 1998, 58). The dominant neoliberalpolicy ‘doxa’, with its economistic view of higher education in relation to theknowledge economy, is an ideology which shapes a range of constantly changingdiscursive and material practices (Epstein et al. 2008). This is ‘not so much a“new” form of liberal government, but rather a hybrid or intensified form of it’that works through and on subjectivities that are racialised, gendered, classedand sexualised (Bansel et al. 2008, 673).

Incidencia del proyecto “ASEAN community” en el desarrollo humano de Tailandia (2004-2014)

Esta investigación se interesa en evaluar los logros y retos que ha presentado el proyecto ASEAN Community en cada una de sus tres áreas de acción (Comunidad económica, comunidad de política y seguridad, y comunidad socio-cultural) ante su aplicación en Tailandia. De esta manera, se busca analizar la incidencia que ha tenido el proyecto en el Desarrollo Humano de Tailandia durante el periodo 2004-2014. A través del análisis del estatus actual a la luz del concepto de libertades instrumentales se realiza la evaluación de los resultados de los proyectos y su conveniencia o no para el desarrollo humano de la sociedad tailandesa.

A Low Cost Controller Board for Teaching Robotics

This paper presents the Smarty Board; a new micro-controller board designed specifically for the robotics teaching needs of Australian schools. The primary motivation for this work was the lack of commercially available and cheap controller boards that would have all their components including interfaces on a single board. Having a single board simplifies the construction of programmable robots that can be used as platforms for teaching and learning robotics. Reducing the cost of the board as much as possible was one of the main design objectives. The target user groups for this device are the secondary and tertiary students, and hobbyists. Previous studies have shown that equipment cost is one of the major obstacles for teaching robotics in Australia. The new controller board was demonstrated at high-school seminars. In these demonstrations the new controller board was used for controlling two robots that we built. These robots are available as kits. Given the strong demand from high-school teachers, new kits will be developed for the next robotic Olympiad to be held in Australia in 2006.