Zwischen Autonomie und Ausgrenzung? - IG LektorInnen

questionaires are structured by the following topics: Frequency of lecturing; mentoring; portion of the
income for the lecturing and for freelance research; proveniance of financial resources for research;
economical precarities and discontinuities in the scientific carreer; integration in the department;
frequency of publications together with other members of the university; specification of the research
done outside the university; specifications about the work place and infrastructure; self description
concerning the in/voluntariness of the situation, the image as a scholar (also in relation to the
discipline) and political consciousness. Thereby, only these questionaires have been utilized which has
been sent back by university lecturers who are also working as freelance scientists. At the moment we
are in the state of evaluation and interpretation of the questionaires.
For the biographical interviews we use a procedure of several steps to elucidate the complex relations
between social and professional position and the subjective experiences of external lecturers and
freelance scientists. The first step is a narrative biographical interview; the second step is an interview
structured by thematical questions, which contain workplace; forms of cooperation and international
contexts; personal approach and attitude towards the advantages and disadvantages of freelance
research as well as towards the standard academic career; the individual scientific contents and their
relation to those of the staff in the department; money and financial security; “science and society”;
political self positioning; relation between “profession” and “privat life” (partnership, children, holiday
and travelling); perspectives of the career and aging; self images. The third step is the structural
hermeneutical reading of selected transcripted passages with special consideration upon recurrent
thematical-rhetorical tropes (e.g. luck and chance as determining factors in the career, genius,
success, fear of starving). The sample consists in five men and three women which reflects the real
percentage of gender distribution and reacts to the dominance of women in the samples of previous
investigations in this field. The interviews take place in Graz, Innsbruck and Vienna in the faculties
mentioned above.
Expert interviews are conducted with persons who are positioned functionally or informally in the four
major fields mentioned above. A central goal is to figure out possible and realizable concepts and
measures concerning the scholars in question as well as projected models of freelance science in the
system of higher education. Furthermore we are interested in rediscovering innovative knowledge and
positionings, which have been hold back for political reasons. The goal of these interviews is not to get
results representative for the fields, but to confront decisionmakers and persons in key positions of
public life with our research questions. This presupposes that we position ourselves as coexperts and
work in favor of a transfer of knowledge in the field. This status of coexpertise needs a permanent
300