1 Paradoxes of Academic Practice: Managerialist Techniques in Critical Pedagogy Torkild Thanem* & Louise Wallenberg** *School of Management & Economics, Växjö University, Sweden ** Department of Cinema Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden The final version of this chapter is published in J. Wolfram Cox, T. LeTrent-Jones, M. Voronov & D. Weir (eds) (2009) Critical Management Studies at Work: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Negotiating Tensions between Theory and Practice, pp. 180-194. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Abstract Whereas previous critical management research has acknowledged the difficulties of creating a critical dialogue in the classroom, this chapter addresses the paradox between the critical and the technical by critically examining how contemporary pedagogy may promote critical learning and classroom dialogue through the employment of neo-liberal managerialist teaching techniques. The chapter is based on a self-reflexive discussion of the conflicts confronting us in our triad roles as critical researchers (in organization studies and film studies), as critical lecturers in these disciplines, and as quasi-pedagogues running a university pedagogy course that is designed to improve the professionalism of fellow university lecturers and enhance student learning. Working from research and teaching agendas that question contemporary practices of work intensification, panopticism and reductionist schemes of representation, we find that our teaching techniques run the risk of reproducing these same practices. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how this conflict may be handled but not resolved.