Activism, in whatever shape or form it takes, involves working for social change and a certain vision of a better or alternative future (although this may not be clearly articulated or defined). The relationship between social activism(s) and academic work is a complex one, not least because of the ways neoliberal logics are regulating universities. This regulation limits the possibilities for academics to think otherwise and to raise the necessarily uncomfortable questions that unsettle and disrupt certainties and securities in the intellectual work (Davies 2005; Ahmed 2017). Social Activism has inspired academic investigations and conceptual developments and research has I turn resulted in new forms of social activism (e.g. Hill Collins & Bilge 2016). In some cases it would seem artificial to distinguish between activism and academic endeavors, altogether. Especially when activism is directed at challenging academic practices, such as dominant Western epistemologies, notions of quality, theoretical and methodological assumptions. This paper draws on life-story interviews with 20 feminist researchers, based at different universities and in different disciplines, in Finland. It asks which role and relation there is between their academic knowledge production (research, teaching, writing, leadership), and activism within and beyond academia. More particularly it explores how they negotiate and balance their activist commitments and how that shapes their knowledge production practices within wider processes connected to the ‘global knowledge economy’ and neoliberalism as manifested in standardized criteria of quality and performance measures (see e.g. Wright & Shore 2017; Lund & Tienari 2018; Pereira 2017; Connell 2007). The results show that the activism of the feminist academics take a variety of forms and involvement. From an activism that implies a participation in the coordination of a protest to writing academic papers. Also the data shows that even though knowledge coming from activism is not explicitly exposed in academic writing or profiles, it gets embedded in the academic everyday practices and knowledge construction. The results invite analysis of the ways in which feminist activism and knowledge becomes articulated within the institutional frames of academia, as well as make sense of how academic privilege plays a key role in the ways feminist activism is shaped.

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