ABSTRACT
Social geographers and philosophers have shown how space and time are socially constructed, fluid, and performed in everyday practices, an approach which is compatible with our socio-material and practice-oriented perspective on academics’ writing practices. The writing that academics do as professionals is a central part of their contractual requirements, and universities do provide academics with spaces in which to work. The researchers anxiously heighten the pace at which they write academic papers in order to gain enough academic capital to move into a secure position – “an increase of countable academic output per pre-defined unit of time”. Interacting with the managerialist pressures shaping academics’ temporal experience are the temporal effects of digital technology. Pippa, a senior academic in marketing, committed to non-work activities on certain evenings, such as swimming sessions, deliberately to stop herself working all the time. Academics manage conflicting pressures by setting boundaries in space and time to protect highly valued knowledge-creation work.
