Post-graduate pedagogy in neuroliberal times: affect, governance and volatility in higher education

Situated within critical debates in education, this paper examines the challenges faced by teachers of post-graduate students through the emerging concept of neuroliberalism. The latter draws attention to how trends in brain science, affect studies and technology are reshaping the ways in which the roles and positionalities of HE practitioners are conceptualised. In a field inflected by long-standing debates about reflexion, neuroscience and educationalisation, neuroliberalism is used as an overarching governmental principle to bring together seemingly disparate strands of policy and practice. Drawing on analyses of qualitative data from interviews with teachers on post-graduate programs, we discuss how our interviewees’ concerns about HE practices signal a neuroliberal agenda focused on meta-cognition, affect and techno-hybridity. Positioning this study within wider debates about neuroliberal governance, we suggest that while the latter presents itself as more humanistic and less technocratic, its effects are politically regressive. It intensifies existing power asymmetries and consolidates structures that normalise and extract from an increasingly volatile model of HE practice and provision.