Timescales, Scapes and Horizons in Motion in Futuring the Contemporary Academy

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing engagement with ‘time’ by social and political theorists as a corrective to the spatial turn (cf. Atkinson, 2019; Mandich, 2019), on the one hand, and the assumption that time is broadly time-past or historical time. Recent work on social time and its politics in the higher education sector explores the way in which time is mediated by neo-liberal globalisation: for example, academic thought time is recast as money time (cf. Noonan, 2016), academic work is experienced by individuals as one of time shortages (cf. Ylijoki and Mäntylä 2003; Vostal, 2014, 2015, 2016), and research time experienced as a juxtaposition of different temporalities (Lapping, 2016). Much of this work, however, attends to time present. Yet aside from work on scenarios and other forms of horizon scanning (cf. Vincent-Lancrin, 2004; Blass et al., 2010), the substantive theorising of time-future in higher education remains relatively under-developed, and particularly so in relation to questions of power, and the future as a resource to be managed if not colonised. In this paper I explore four different kinds of time-ordering technologies and associated practices in the academy: (1) the introduction of formal risk assessments into all aspects of academic activity – from research work in the field (zones of conflict) to hosting events (threat of terrorism) and strategic planning; (2) the temporal practices of global rankings where the horizon and thus the future is always in view and needing to be acted on; (3) horizon scanning and scenario activity aimed at managing presumed risks into the future; and (4) the ways on which trade agreements (TPP, CETA) that include education services aim to colonise the future and in doing so limit the nature of political intervention in the name of nationalism. These different futuring practices set in motion different kinds of socio-temporal and political sensibilities and institutional arrangements that reshape the nature of the academy.