The unknown beast of reputation: How epistemic subjects are produced ...

In my research, I analyse how epistemic subjects are produced in multiple practices of presentation and valuation that include CVs. My focus is not on the CV documents themselves, but on what researchers and their institutions do with and in relation to these documents in (auto)biographical practices. In particular, I am interested in how subjects address and respond to different forms of (imagined) others - for example explicit or tacit scales, reviewers, scientific subfields and their norms, ideals and personae. In these processes of subjectification, actors make comparative judgments about their own academic self and those of others. In my talk, I will present my ongoing dissertation project, and discuss examples from my empirical research. This includes semi-structured interviews with historians, members of appointment committees, equal opportunity committees, and field observation