ABSTRACT
A welcome debate around the marketization of higher education is growing, which takes issue, among other things, with the commodification of education, the emphasis on investment in new buildings rather than staff and students, and the running of universities as businesses. I ask in how far academics, who often see themselves as the objects and not the subjects of marketization, become complicit in marketization through practices of self-branding? I place particular emphasis on the self-branding practices of the ‘digital humanitarian’, the academic-activist who uses digital media for humanitarian purposes. This is not to say that academics secretly endorse marketization; it is rather an observation that the marketization of higher education runs deeper than simply the management structure of universities; it traverses all levels, including those of academics, who feel the pressure within the neoliberal university landscape to self-brand or fail.
