Magdalena Styś | Why facilitate research only to ignore its results?
Why doesn’t the UvA put the research conducted at its own university into practice, columnist Magdalena Styś wonders. “If so much attention is devoted to researching stress and burnout, why isn’t the institution that facilitates this research leading the way in implementing solutions to these problems?”
Upon opening the UvA’s website, we’re greeted with the information that we study at “one of Europe’s foremost research universities.” If we scroll a little further down, we learn that the UvA is a “hub of academic research and education.”
Sceptical
The vision is certainly enticing: if I were a prospective student or PhD candidate, I’d be excited to join an institution that holds itself to a high academic standard and supports researchers in their work. However, having studied at the UvA for a few years now, equipped with the knowledge of how the university runs in practice, I can feel myself turning increasingly sceptical; after all, why would a hub of academic research not apply the work of your its researchers into practice?
Newsletters
Take, for instance, SEVEN, a project focused on “developing systemic and fair climate solutions” and proudly displayed on the homepage of the university website. SEVEN studies, amongst other things, ways to transition into a more plant-based diet, and discusses how “current food systems [...] contribute to environmental polution.” Seeing this, one would assume the UvA is mindful of the impact of its catering on the environment; yet, a walk through the meat-lined canteens presents a different reality. This begs the question: from the perspective of the university, what is all of this research even done for? To have something to write about in newsletters?
The case is similar with mental health considerations. Despite “Stress” being a prominent UvA research area, encompassing, e.g., anxiety and burnout, students complain year by year that they cannot receive adequate support on those matters from the university. If so much attention is paid to exploring the impacts of stress and burnout, why isn’t the institution facilitating this research a pioneer in applying solutions to those problems?
Vague calls
This situation becomes even more puzzling when you consider how this “attention to research” is a common argument used to discourage students and staff from engaging with the university as a political space. We see this show up year by year in student council elections: for every candidate whose campaign focuses on student mental health or ethical collaborations, there is one who makes vague calls to “foster academic excellence.”
Perhaps any attempt to engage in this argument in good faith is just letting myself get baited by people who don’t have my best interest at heart. But even granting the ridiculous idea that the university is only a space for academic work (as if it were possible to divorce any public space from politics), how can this academic excellence be fostered in a space that doesn’t even consider its researchers important enough to incorporate their insights into its policy?
The UvA is full of people, both students and staff, conducting high quality, societally important research, in pretty much every field imaginable. I’m excited to see a future where this research isn’t just funded, approved by ethics committees and used for marketing brochures, but also listened to and applied at the very institution where it’s developed.
Magdalena Styś is a third-year linguistics student at the UvA. Starting from August onwards, she will write columns for Folia.
