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Biographical note
Filip Vostal is a Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic. His research encompasses sociology of time, science & technology studies (STS) and contemporary social and cultural theory.'Hurry, hurry, hurry. Cramming work into the seemingly ever pacier rhythms of academic life. We have to wonder what this means for thinking and for the community upon which university learning is built. From a wide range of perspectives, this brilliantly curated collection of pieces avoids the obvious and brings forward the deep-rooted politics of time within the university. This book might seem like yet another thing to add to an unwieldy reading pile or another item to scribble on an anxiety producing “to do” list, but it will be worth it, not least because it will put those pressures into context and will allow the reader some space to reflect upon them.'
- David Beer, Professor of Sociology, University of York, UK,
'Inquiring into Academic Timescapes is an essential resource for both novice and veteran scholars of timescapes. The collection includes insights from both seasoned temporality researchers and voices that are too often excluded from academic recognition. This collection draws together the off-beat habits of academic life to reveal the spontaneous order waiting for analysis. New scholars to the field will benefit from Vostal’s efforts to curate a broad assembly of approaches to the study of academic timescapes, while more experienced researchers will benefit from exploring emerging research in the field. This collection inspired me to reflect on both my research methodology and the habits that make up my own academic practices.'
- Fabian Cannizzo, Honorary Associate, La Trobe University, Australia,
'This fine collection of essays provides a nuanced account of the dynamic multiplicity of academic timescapes. It is a welcome counter to popular narratives about time pressure and the need for slow-down. A must-read for anyone interested in understanding the embodied experience of living as an academic today.'
- -Judy Wajcman, Anthony Giddens Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics,
'My ticking pomodoro timer is ticking away here as I sit down to draft my endorsement of this magnificent and urgent account of the uneven temporality of academia. It doesn't matter how long I spent reading it though. What matters more is that I find the right words to explain how <i>Academic Timescapes</i> allows the reader to time-travel and tempo-travel through institutional and disciplinary uneven temporal halls of academic life. This book includes riveting accounts of how time is spent, lost, and gained. If there's anything shared across academia it is after all a fixation on how others utilize time. Thus this book has you flipping the page with its immersive time stories. But more importantly this collection demands that academia takes on a broader temporal accounting. One must recognize and declare their temporal position within the larger structures of privilege and the production of precarity. (The 25 minute timer buzzes in background.) <i>Academic Timescapes</i> lays out the groundwork of what it means to think in terms of a new "chronosolidarity" including the possibilities of a new temporal order of academic life in the future.'
- Sarah Sharma, McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology, University of Toronto, and Author of 'In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics',
This book brings together more than three dozen scholars who collectively craft a much-needed nuanced sociologically-driven perspective of temporalities in academia. Delving into contemporary processes which are quintessentially temporal in their character, such as the increasing precariousness of jobs among junior scholars, the prevalence of grant funding, the role of evaluation systems, and the political economy of higher education, the authors offer a forensic analysis of the complex nature of academic temporalities as experienced, understood, controlled, managed and contested in various academic and research contexts.