In this talk I will draw upon three research projects to consider the ways in which quantitative performance indicators are increasingly generative of norms and values that shape how research is carried out and communicated. The first project (with Alex Rushforth) is based on fieldwork at six research groups in two Dutch academic medical centres, and focuses on interactions between evaluation and knowledge production in biomedical research. The second project (with Thomas Franssen) is based on fieldwork at an internationally acclaimed Dutch social scientific research group. Here, we zoom in on how junior researchers relate to and use performance measures in academic identity formation and in the process of positioning themselves in the academic labor market. The third project (with Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner) draws on a comparison of ongoing debates about research evaluation in three Dutch law faculties. The project aims to analyse the implications of the need to create new alignments between research and science policy on the one hand (including the requirement of ‘societal relevance’), and the everyday articulation work legal scholars engage in to bring research to closure on the other.
For the present talk I will mainly consider how our informants actively appropriate numbers through a personalised process of identity work – a process seemingly in tension with standardisation and quantification. I will explore the usefulness of Sloterdijk’s ‘anthropotechnics’ concept to better understand this potential tension, and the ‘existential acrobatics’ academics seem engaged in while facing insecurity and risks.