Temporality

In today’s busy universities, do researchers even have the time to interact with societal actors and reflect the societal impact of their work? There is a growing body of literature which argues that the changing cultures and practices of current academia cannot be adequately understood without considering their shifting relation to time (Felt 2016, Gibbs et al. 2015). Authors discuss the consequences of academics’ experience of a constant acceleration (Vostal 2015), and diagnose the decline of time for reflection (Garforth/Cervinka 2009) and timeless time not devoted to the production of specific outputs (Ylijoki/Mantylä 2003). Aptly summarising many other critiques, Murphy (2016) argues that higher education institutions and their practitioners seem to be shifting from a logic of discovery to a logic of delivery, with significant consequences for researchers’ work. At the same time, researchers are more and more often asked to anticipate distant futures in assessing the future impact of their work.
Platform research builds on this emerging literature to explore how researchers experience and use time in academia, and whether this creates conditions that foster or inhibit responsible practices.

References:

Felt, U. (2016). Of time-scapes and knowledge-scapes: Re-timing Research and Higher Education. In P. Scott, J. Gallacher, & G. Parry (Eds.), New Landscapes and Languages of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford Universit Press.

Garforth, L., & Cervinkova, A. (2009). Times and Trajectories in Academic Knowledge Production. In U. Felt (Ed.), Knowing and Living in Academic Research. Convergence and heterogeneity in research cultures in the European context (pp. 169-224). Prague: Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

Gibbs, P., Ylijoki, O.-H., Guzmán-Valenzuela, C., & Barnett, R. (2015). Universitites in the Flux of Time: An Exploration of Time and Temporality in University Life. London: Routledge.
Murphy, P. (2015). Discovery and delivery: time schemas and the bureaucratic university. In P. Gibbs,

O.-H. Ylijoki, C. Guzmán-Valenzuela, & R. Barnett (Eds.), Universitites in the Flux of Time: An Exploration of Time and Temporality in University Life (pp. 137-153). London: Routledge.
Ylijoki, O. H., & Mantyla, H. (2003). Conflicting time perspectives in academic work. Time & Society, 12(1), 55-78.

Vostal, F. (2015). Academic life in the fast lane: The experience of time and speed in British academia. Time & Society, 24(1), 71-95. doi:10.1177/0961463x13517537