We received the news recently that the MSc Mad Studies at Queen Margaret University is definitely being discontinued. This was announced last autumn as a likelihood but we've been campaigning to keep it going, to no avail. The university will honour the degree destinations of current MSc students, but there are no further intakes for this course. And the university will continue to offer Mad Studies in some format – either stand-alone modules or micro-credentials – but not the degree.
I'm feeling very much on the fence about it. On the one hand, it's a shame that QMU hasn't allowed the course to really find its feet and thrive. It was only launched in November 2020 with a January 2021 intake – and we all know what was happening in the world at that point in time! No small feat to start such an ambitious project in the middle of a pandemic. It's hardly fair to cast judgment upon the programme in such a short time; barely three years running.
On the other hand, there's a lot of tension about whether/how Mad Studies fits into the straightjacket of higher education. As much as we like to think that advanced degrees demonstrate free thinking and penetrating research, the Academy is beholden to corporate and private interests, and demands obedience to the status quo. Money runs the Academy: why else is peer-reviewed research locked behind a paywall? Why else is research funded by industry? Why else do administrations like QMU drop programmes in cost-cutting exercises? Knowledge is owned, bought and sold.
All along the way, Mad Studies challenges this. Mad knowledge is born from lived experience of madness, it cannot be gained vicariously - that's the whole point. The mad experience is cloaked in chaos and ineffibility, the mad scholar inherently struggles to meet deadlines and word counts. Yet rather than bowing down to the sanctity of qualifications and professions, Mad Studies demands that lived experience be recognised as of equal and in some ways greater value. In other words: do we even need a MSc Mad Studies? Do we need a piece of paper to validate knowledge?
Mad Studies is a young and undisciplined discipline. Like an unruly teenager it is still trying to work out who it is, thrashing around and in the thrall of navel-gazing self-consciousness. Maybe it just doesn't belong in the Academy. Maybe its destiny is elsewhere.
Well it was a good idea to try, anyway, and kudos to those who put time, effort, blood sweat and tears into the enterprise. RIP MSc Mad Studies. When doors close, others perhaps open...
Photo by Veit Hammer on Unsplash