How is knowledge organized in higher education? In recent decades, the adoption of market-oriented logics within institutions of research and higher education had notable implications on how the pursuit of knowledge is shaped and rewarded. As documented by a number of authors, for example, the "commercialization of science" had consequences on the quality of knowledge produced in particular research setting. Backed by distinct cultures of quantification and tied to concrete devices measurement and commensuration, the broader audit cultures that embed modern research effectively shape what we know and can know. In this talk, I explore instances of these cultures by looking into the role of research assessments and budget models as mechanisms for shaping and regulating how universities structure their instructional and research operations. Focusing on recent models of research evaluation and budgeting, this talk shows how several techniques of quantification become important for implementing change in higher education with long-lasting consequences for the distribution of knowledge, the organization of the sciences, and the structure of the public sphere.

Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of California, San Diego and Director of the Latin American Studies Program. He is author of Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets (2019), and The Quantified Scholar: How Research Evaluations Transformed the British Social Sciences (2022).

Cosponsors: Center for Ethics, Society & Computing, ISR, Department of Sociology