“Being like a researcher”: supervising Masters dissertations in a neoliberalizing university

The neoliberalization of universities is creating an increasingly instrumental, market-focused approach to higher education. This paper focuses on Masters dissertation supervision in the UK, which to date has been understudied and which recent changes to higher education have left in a precarious position. It presents a collaborative reflection on the supervision process conducted by students and the author at the University of Edinburgh. Expanding on recent interventions concerning geography, neoliberalization and the academy, I suggest that communality, ambiguity and collective reflectivity offer tactics both to enhance supervisory practice and to resist neoliberalization.