Dr. Christian Johann Schmid

German state-controlled universities have to satisfy two, at best, equally valued tasks: research and teaching. The doxa of the academic field, however, predisposes academics to seek scientific authority through research accomplishments (only). Other than research which is embedded in scientific communities, academic teaching exclusively occurs within the local confinements of universities. It is thus the task of academic teaching where a university's leadership has some decision-making leeway to purposively coordinate its members' activities. But, what are the chances of the rectorate to actually help emancipate academic teaching and thereby equilibrate the skewed nexus of research and teaching? How should it be done? How it should not be done! In whose interest is it to change anything at all?

Christian J. Schmid will provide selected claims taken from his doctoral thesis where he theoretically re-interprets and concludes findings from several funded research projects about the 'managerial governance of academic teaching'. In doing so, he borrows from Bourdieu's theory of practice (in general) and his concept of interest (in particular) to eventually outline a more general sociological approach to the 'organization of (dis)interested action'.

Christian J. Schmid is a sociologist who currently holds the position of a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Organizational Studies, Continuing Education and Social Management at TU Dortmund University. The last few years his research focused on the managerial governance of higher education institutions and the social organization of deviants in outlaw motorcycle clubs.