The conference circuit, once lively with questioning and dialogue, now contends with a new problem: the “ghost academic”.
These are scholars whose names appear in conference programmes and proceedings, whose abstracts are listed, yet who never turn up to deliver their presentations.
They accrue the CV line, but never share the substance.
At first glance, this may seem a minor oddity, a logistical blip among myriad research meetings. But look closer and the phenomenon hints at deeper problems within higher education; changes driven by the mounting pressures of the marketised university.
These invisible delegates are not simply absent individuals, they are symptoms of a system that increasingly privileges the performance of productivity over the practice of scholarship, with worrying consequences for academic life and the exchange of knowledge.
The academic CV arms race
The last two decades have seen universities across the UK, and elsewhere, adopt an increasingly commercial approach to governance and funding. Driven by competition for students, research income, and global rankings, institutions have shifted towards a marketised logic in which outputs, metrics, and performative achievements are central. Performance is tracked through an ever-more elaborate system of audits, league tables, and key performance indicators.
For academics, this means living under the constant scrutiny, whether at a national level as in the REF (Research Excellence Framework), or internally through job criteria and annual reviews. The message is clear: career progression is tied to visible productivity. For early career researchers and established scholars alike, the need to have CVs brimming with publications, conference papers and other outputs has become existential.
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