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In my research I analyse how epistemic subjects (Knorr-Cetina 1999) are produced through multiple quantitative and qualitative valuation practices involving academic CVs. Actors who read and evaluate CVs as “tools of assessment” (Ruth 2008) do not only have to tackle the question whether the person presented in the CV is suitable for a given post, but also whether, and on the basis of which criteria CVs can be interpreted in the first place (Kaltenbrunner/De Rijcke 2019). Beyond applications, strategically aiming to obtain academic positions or funding, academic CVs also represent epistemic subjects on homepages of institutions, in academic social networks or in personal archives. In my talk I will discuss findings from my research work, including interviews with historians, members of appointment committees, equal opportunity committees, and field observations. My research suggests that for some authors of CVs, counting and accumulating items can be pleasurable. Others engage in creating CVs of failure (Stefan 2010), problematizing aspects otherwise kept rather silent within the logics of “epistemic capitalism” (Fochler 2016). Altogether, practices of presentation and valuation associated with academic CVs have in common that they require addressing various forms of (imagined) others – e.g. explicit or tacit scales, referees, scientific subfields and their norms, ideals and personae. This implies taking over different perspectives and adopting expectations attributed to these others, in order to look at and make comparative judgments about the qualities and quantities of the respective academic self. Thus, I understand academic CVs as media of scholarly subjectification.
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