Time, Space and Academic Identity

In conceptualising academic time and the transformation of academic work this paper proceeds via an analytical construct of three interdependent dimensions: time, space and resource. The paper takes cues from the landmark work of Giedion (1941, 1967) on time, space and architecture, scholarship on the evolution of the university as institution, recent writings on creative work in the contemporary ‘attention economy’ (e.g. Webster, 2014; Williams, 2018, Wu, 2017), and current scholarship in the psychology field on the subjective experience of time (Wittman, 2017). The temporalities and spatiality of academic work have always been fundamentally intertwined, embodied in the physical form, pedagogy, research and governance practices of the university. The historical spatiality of the university had time logics: a temporal intensifying of the experience of academic community and diminished quotidian distractions. Campus design often consciously evoked a sense of temporal transcendence, of being part of something at once ancient and future-oriented, spatially tightly situated whilst universalist in ambition. Universities look backwards in time, at histories of being at the forefront of creating new knowledge. Yet modern connectivity diminishes that spatial rationale for efficient scholarly co-location. Cloisters offer no refuge from on-demand content and social media. With digital instantaneity and ubiquity, knowledge and its academic co-production is decoupled from time and place. The age-old tension between solitude and engagement is compounded, with neither the rituals and architectures of the traditional university, nor physical reclusiveness, offering haven from demands upon the individual’s quotient of absolute academic time. Virtual presence, on campus and in expansive academic communities, is the consolation of technologies of ubiquitous distraction. The third dimension explored in this paper, resource, treats academic time and the spatiality of the campus as core resources, and interdependent with the financial and reputational resources that are key enablers, and objectives, of contemporary higher education institutions. In a paradox of affluence, university reputation may drive resource endowment, enabling more investments in ‘virtualising’ educational technologies and academic mobility, compounding questions about the spatial rationale for the campus, and the university’s relationship to place and society. Competition for resources has brought new temporal dictates. The timeframes of funding rounds, grant periods, accreditation reviews, routinised cooperation with the reporting requirements entailed in rankings tournaments, are in tension with the uncertainties of new knowledge creation and the ‘humdrum’ timeframes of its dissemination. Resource-rich institutions are rigorously bordered. Exclusiveness brings new demands upon academic time re student admissions, hiring and promotion, and strategic vetting of external collaborations. Professionalisation of ancillary and managerial functions has ensued. The paper concludes with reference to recent work in the professional identity literature relevant to conceptualising shifts in subjective experiences of academic time under such conditions.