The Auditory Academic Transforming the Soundscape of Scholarship

Seeing is believing. Supposedly. But how many metrics, online dashboards, ‘stretch targets,’ bullying incidents, research misconduct and academic misconduct cases do scholars need to see before alternative modes of higher education are considered? If distinctive and dissonant ways of teaching, learning, researching and knowing are to be offered, then it is time to activate the soundscapes of scholarship via the auditory academic. Revisiting the work of two powerful Canadian scholars from the analogue age – Murray Schafer and Harold Innis – their key tropes of the ‘Thinking Ear’ and the ‘Bias of Communication’ are deployed to configure and shape the auditory academic, listening to the different ways of knowing, rather seeing (and believing) the unjust, irrational and mediocre.