With the rise of managerialism at universities - an issue of growing concern to the Academic Freedom Committee (AFC) - Robin Briggs' lecture, The Knowledge Economy and Academic Freedom, at this year's TB Davie Memorial Lecture on 12 August, was highly topical.

Briggs had plenty of experience to draw on: he was "outed" as one of those at Oxford University opposed to plans by vice-chancellor John Hood to streamline the university's structures; plans, said The Times Higher Education Supplement at the time, that were seen as an attack on Oxford's traditional democratic decision-making process.

So Briggs spoke of his own experiences at Oxford: growing managerialism, state funding formulas for universities and the commodification of academia, and administrative careerism.

(Listen to the podcast).