Placing researcher identifications: labs, offices and homes in the PhD

Abstract

Recent and ongoing changes in university structures and desires, as well as alterations in doctoral education, are shaping new spatialities and temporalities of academic work and identities. This paper considers the spatialities of one set of researcher identities – those undertaking PhD degrees – and specifically explores the material and socio‐cultural affordances of the sites in which research is practised. Based on a qualitative study (interviews with 30 PhD students and focus groups with 34 students) at two Australian metropolitan and research‐intensive universities, we find students associate different forms of researcher identities with the different spaces of research work. In particular, the university campus and specifically the office and/or laboratory are sites where research is approached as a form of work, and identification as both worker and researcher. Notably, social connections and the power relations of the campus are woven through these identifications. Home, in contrast, can serve as a place of respite or a quiet space to think, but more often disrupts identifications as researcher or emergent academic. This research suggests the need first, to recognise the significance of a physical workspace on campus for developing researchers and second, for a more nuanced consideration of the notion of a neoliberalised university.

‘A Source of Sanity’: The Role of Social Support for Doctoral Candidates’ Belonging and Becoming

“…However, child-caring responsibilities can also affect male students, like Omar (an international STEM student): "Now as a father and husband, I don't have any free time at home, so going to the office is kind of a shelter and escape from the routine." The challenge of keeping up personal and professional identities by utilising different physical spaces (e.g., home and campus), as a parent and researcher, is discussed in detail elsewhere (Dowling & Mantai, 2016).…”

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

“…As Gulson and Symes (2007) note, 'spatial theories are not restricted to geography, their traditional "home," but travel through and between social theory' (p. 98). Higher education researchers have also concerned themselves with matters spatial, illuminating that higher education space is not merely a 'blank canvas' (Temple, 2014) and identifying the powerful role that space plays in the constitution of academic subjects (Dowling & Mantai, 2017;Kelly, 2017). As Reynolds (2004) notes, 'it is not only places and their built-in constraints that determine certain practices, which then become habitual or taken for granted, but also the adjustments and compromises ' (p. 14).…”

“…By focusing on doctoral students' experiences of working at home, we build upon existing studies that have surfaced the domestic space as a location for research work (Gornall & Salisbury, 2012;Kuntz, 2012), as well as accounts that have emerged across the doctoral advice literature (Leonard, 2001;Sternberg, 1981), and doctoral education research (Dowling & Mantai, 2017;Kelly, 2017). For example, in their study on the doctoral body, Hopwood and Paulson (2012) also consider the importance of space, arguing that 'spaces and places students work and live [in] matter in terms of their personal wellbeing and academic progress' (p. 667).…”

The career aspirations and expectations of geography doctoral students: establishing academic subjectivities within a shifting landscape

“…Last, further research is required. Better understanding is needed of how space and place contribute to PhD and academic cultures and of the complex spatialities of doctoral education (Berg, ; Dowling & Mantai, ; Monk et al ., ). For instance, are PhD students better served when located in stand‐alone geography departments and do career anxieties increase, or are they abated, when they have access to workplaces on campus with other students?…”