1.10 Gift economies and formal reward systems within Leiden University (G)

Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner & Tjistke Holtrop
In this interactive session, we hope to stimulate reflection on how Leiden University staff members deal with conflicts between individual and communal priorities in research and education (broadly construed, incl. publishing, reviewing, maintaining infrastructure). We will kick off the session with a 10 min joint pitch by the organizers that illustrate the above problems in conceptual and practical terms, on the basis of research on such conflicts in scholarly publishing. We will then ask participants to reflect on and discuss several everyday examples of gift giving and exchange in their research and education-related practice where they encounter similar considerations around individual priorities and communal responsibilities. The rest of the session is an open discussion around central questions that follow from this reflection: How and where do these conflicts manifest? Are these considerations gendered or particular to certain disciplines or kinds of staff members? What knowledge about science and higher education and its systems of recognition and reward have participants developed when learning to navigate the conflicts? We will end the session with a discussion on how these logics of gift and exchange in academia should be brought to bear on our systems of recognition and reward.