Developing a Research Topic in an Internationalized and Insecure University Setting

This article examines the connection between the material conditions for young scholars’ work and the development of research topics in a context of increasingly internationalized and insecure university careers. The author re-examines the various dissertation proposals and grant applications that he wrote as a doctoral student, putting them in relation with the conditions of their production and moments of rupture in his career. The article is intended to identify the real and variable effects of graduate students’ material situations and their institutional and disciplinary contexts on the production of knowledge.