The Loneliness of the Cinematic Academic

Reflections on Reconnecting and Community

Abstract

This contribution offers a personal reflection on the topic of the “lonely” academic; citing particular situations of isolation, separation, and distance from community that are too often the consequences of the contemporary condition for researchers in third level institutions. It invites the reader to reflect on the relationship between the vocation, the individual, and the neoliberal ideologies underpinning the value systems of the modern university, and to consider what our relationship is to this, as academics working in (and committed) to institutions striving for the betterment of society, but often forgetting those who are marginalised within those.