Advancing Critical University Studies for academia/cs at risk: Four priorities to inform scholars/hip

This conceptual chapter asks questions about scholarship about and from academics and institutions whose protection and participation within academia and in public life falls outside of inter/national law and/or institutional autonomy. Such has been the experience of three of the co-authors since being displaced by the Syrian crisis. We argue that if Critical University Studies is to be a field of scholarship, practice, activism and solidarity beyond the comforts, interests and ideals of the in-tact institution and the enabling nation-state, it will need to interrogate and challenge the normative, aspirational concepts most associated with the sector, and which prevail in policy. Within the chapter we offer a critical reprotection view of the metanarratives of academic freedom, institutional autonomy and the public good in relation to this area of enquiry, before turning to propose four priorities (relating to authorship, ways of being and doing, the object-subject of study, and interpretative frameworks) to advance critical university studies for academics/a at risk . In so doing, we hope to better inform current and future conditions for developing scholars/hip in this area.