Dr. Bengü Hosch-Dayican

In the past decades the New Public Management based higher education reforms have fostered universities to become more corporate and managerial organizations (Leisyte and Dee, 2012; Krücken and Meier, 2006, Braun and Merrien, 1999). In such universities academics lose their status as key actors in collegial university governance.  In response to these changes, academics in Europe started creating and collectively participating in cross-disciplinary social movements against the reform initiatives.

Dr. Hosch-Dayican seeks to understand what new forms of collective responses academics undertake in order to reclaim their position as influential actors within the higher education governance systems. That is, what prompted the creation of the collective response, how are the academic platforms organized, and what are their action repertoires? Based on higher education and social movements' studies the academics' resistance organizations are addressed in the UK, the Netherlands and the Flanders region of Belgium. The findings show that these organizations emerge as new political actors in the system of higher education governance in all three countries, whereas the extent of disciplinary variety in joining such movements varies across policy contexts.

Bengü Hosch-Dayican is post-doctoral researcher within the Professorship of Higher Education at the Center for Higher Education (zhb). She holds a doctoral degree in political science from the University of Twente. Her research focuses on the governance of higher education, political participation and social movements within the higher education governance, as well as on the changing nature of academic work with specific emphasis on gender aspects.