Being an Academic Today: The Dynamics of Knowledge Creation in the Contemporary University [Paper presented at the Quadrangular Conference 2015, Lancaster University, UK] (original) (raw)

Abstract

The organisational landscape of academic working life has been transformed over the last two decades as a consequence of challenges such as massification, the Research Excellence Framework, and digitisation. These factors, affecting most contemporary universities, ultimately impact how knowledge is produced and disseminated by the academic workforce. Writing practices (including research, teaching, and admin-related writing) are thus increasingly shaped by agencies within and far beyond the academy. This paper reports on preliminary findings from an ESRC-funded research project which ethnographically explores the writing practices of academics in the organisational landscape of the modern university. The focus is on knowledge creating activities, much of which are exemplified in academics’ writing practices, and how these are instantiated through material artefacts and technologies. The focus of this paper is the utility of ‘technobiographic’ accounts as one component of the methodology employed. A technobiography is presented as way to research lived experience with digital media, phases of change over time, and how and why particular habits of use emerge. Through an account of our preliminary findings, we argue that technobiographies are a vital window into academics’ lived experiences with technology and the subtle and nuanced ways in which practices of knowledge creation are contested. To be cited as: Bhatt, I. & McCulloch, S. (2015). Being an academic today: the dynamics of knowledge creation in the contemporary University, paper presented at the Quadrangular Conference 2015 'Organisational Practices within Contemporary Landscapes' Monday 14th September, Management School, Lancaster University.

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