Curating care-full spaces: doctoral students negotiating study from home

Abstract

This article explores how care and space shape doctoral becoming. We extend previous higher education research that has critically examined the spatial arrangements of postgraduate study to explore how doctoral students negotiate both study from home and care-work responsibilities. The article draws on collaborative autoethnographic texts created by the authors to understand the ways in which care shaped their decisions about study spaces. We identify both exclusions and disadvantage in these accounts, at the same time as we discern wilfulness in the ways the contradictory positions of postgraduate student and caregiver were negotiated. We conclude the article by arguing that educational spaces are involved in the maintenance of academic norms that position care-work as invisible and out-of-place/space. Despite this, the creation of productive home spaces that facilitate both care and doctoral work remain possible.

“Peering through the window looking in”: postgraduate experiences of non-belonging and belonging in relation to mental health and wellbeing

“…] It's the in-between position of a PhD student that can be unpleasant. (full-time PhD, mixed race woman) Yet being physically present on campus does not suit all learners who may need to work from home (Burford and Hook, 2019); alternative routes to belonging, including virtual spaces, need to be considered for part-time, distance learners and those unable to physically attend Because of disabilities, health or caring responsibilities. Conversely, a masters-level learner spoke of negative impacts on physical and mental wellbeing of trying to work in a cramped home environment which again highlights inequities; some learners simply do not have the option of comfortable homeworking spaces.…”

“…I personally cannot work from home as I've got three children and it's not quiet enough, also I don't get into working mode until I physically leave the house and have a space… The space I have at university is [not ideal] but you feel like, okay I've got a space… but I could be chucked out any day and you don't really know where your place is, my voice is not being heard, I don't feel like anyone is really interested in my work… It's the in-between position of a PhD student that can be unpleasant.' (Full-time PhD, mixed race woman) Yet being physically present on campus does not suit all learners who may need to work from home (Burford and Hook, 2019); alternative routes to belonging, including virtual spaces, need to be considered for part-time, distance learners and those unable to physically attend due to disabilities, health or caring responsibilities. Conversely, a masters-level learner spoke of negative impacts on physical and mental wellbeing of trying to work in a cramped home environment which again highlights inequities; some learners simply do not have the option of comfortable homeworking spaces.…”

“…Many postgraduates balance multiple identities as students, employees and parents (Jazvac-Martek, 2009). Expressions of non-belonging can be traced to conditions specifically affecting postgraduates including uncertain statuses; postgraduates occupy liminal spaces "in-between" student and fully fledged academic (Morris et al, 2021;Morris and Wisker, 2011;Morris, 2011) which often exposes them to power disparities (Burford and Hook, 2019). Because of the transience of postgraduate populations, sustaining relationships and communities can present challenges.…”

“…Attending to belonging prompts reflection on the need for more inclusive and equitable academic cultures and practices more broadly. Many postgraduate experiences of (non)belonging are shaped through gendered, classed, raced, aged, ableised and carer positionalities (Burford and Hook, 2019;Carter et al, 2013;Loveday, 2016;Puwar, 2004;Williams et al, 2019;Winchester-Seeto et al, 2014).…”

Writing a Doctoral Thesis in a Non-Western Voice

“…The narrow imaginings of doctoral subjectivity in the past has led to researchers paying increasingly close attention to doctoral education as a field of power relations shaped by gender, emotion, relationships, and care (see Burford & Hook, 2019;Grant, 2008;Hook, 2016;Manathunga, 2007). This chapter is an attempt to re-imagine the possibilities of doctoral writing that are often ignored by the academy itself.…”