Chapter 4: Temporal Navigation in Academic Work: Experiences of Early Career Academics

In the current managerial university environment, academic work has become increasingly competitive, metrics-based, insecure and stratified. These changes have important temporal implications. Several empirical studies have reported that academics are overloaded and pressed for time in their work (e.g. Currie, Harris, & Thiele, 2000; Fanghenel, 2012; Henkel, 2010; Menzies & Newson, 2007; Vostal, 2016; Ylijoki, 2013). Accordingly, they live in fast time (Guzmán-­Valenzuela & Di Napoli, 2015) in the fast lane (Vostal, 2015) with the h-index (Burrows, 2012) and feel that they have no time to think (Menzies & Newton, 2007), no time to sleep (Acker & Armenti, 2004) and no space for thought-time (Noonan, 2016) or timeless time (Ylijoki & Mäntylä, 2003).