Project work strategies in fusion research

Virtová, Tereza; Vostal, Filip

doi:10.1177/0961463x21990136

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Here I touch on two effects: the need to 'sell' fusion and the multiplication of ITER's aims, both of which contributed to labels of failure that have haunted the ITER project's development and construction. Virtová and Vostal (2021) suggest that inflated claims to attract grants for proposed research projects are now so widespread that no one expects projects to achieve their initial aims; failure is therefore not so much unexpected as par for the course. The problem intensifies with something of ITER's size.…”

Section: Politics: Selling and Fragmentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Suspending failure: temporalities, ontologies, and gigantism in fusion energy development

Alexander

2023

Royal Anthropological Inst

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Tracing the history of terrestrial fusion energy to a giant multinational experimental fusion facility under construction reveals a series of consequential failures, re‐evaluations of once defunct designs, but also persistence. To account for how this vast enterprise, dogged by failure, endures, I suggest that different ontological narratives re‐orientate the enterprise both temporally and vis‐à‐vis different forms and valences of failure. Thus the rhetoric of mission‐driven project vies with that of open‐ended, present‐focused experiment: the former is positioned as the crucial solution to the threat of climate change; the latter ‘bakes in’ virtuous failure as integral to creative practice. Visionary promise moves to a focus on the meanwhile. Finally, the sheer unfurling size to which attention is constantly drawn offers a disorientating spectacle, denying perspective or closure and acting to suspend judgements of failure.

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Section: Politics: Selling and Fragmentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Anthropological nuclear studies are typically concerned with high‐energy physics (e.g. Roy 2012; Traweek 1988) or fission: weapons, contamination, and wastes.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Suspending failure: temporalities, ontologies, and gigantism in fusion energy development

Alexander

2023

Royal Anthropological Inst

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“…Dollinger (2021) applies the concept of projectified time, exhibiting projects as time-consuming and affecting the university teacher's routine work. Projects require timely output production of research (Torka, 2018), and Virtova and Vostal (2021) suggest that workers apply a strategy of "time stretching," where the boundaries of projects are stretched in time. Hubmann (2021) argues for "time-tricking" in the same manner.…”

Section: Personal Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hubmann (2021) argues for "time-tricking" in the same manner. Virtova and Vostal (2021) investigate project work strategies in fusion research and argue increased projectification may reduce one's presence in the workplace. This is supported by Ekstedt (2019), who-supported by IT solutions-notes that project work may take place almost anywhere.…”

Section: Personal Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Sector Projectification – A Systematic Review of the Literature

Jacobsen

2022

SJPA

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“Projectification” is an emerging subdomain of project management research which argues that proliferation of projects is one of the most important current trends in the public sector. As an emerging sub-field within projectification research, “public sector projectification” has been given increasing attention in the past few years. This article presents a structured literature review (SLR) on “public sector projectification”, with the aim of systematising the existing empirical knowledge guided by the research question: “What are the empirical implications of public sector projectification at the personal, organisational and societal levels in journal articles?” The SLR search detects 53 articles published between 2009 and 2021. Articles were detected by a literature search in three selected scholarly research databases and by reviewing cited references in the articles detected. By analysing researched empirical implications from the projectification literature at the three levels of personal, organisational, and societal, the SLR demonstrates that public sector projectification is a multilevel phenomenon with contradictory implications and interesting dynamics between the levels, which should gain increased attention in both research and practice to release the potential for organising projects in the public sector context.

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Between Delivery and Luck: Projectification of Academic Careers and Conflicting Notions of Worth at the Postdoc Level

Nästesjö

2024

Minerva

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This paper investigates how early career academics interpret and respond to institutional demands structured by projectification. Developing a ‘frame analytic’ approach, it explores projectification as a process constituted at the level of meaning-making. Building on 35 in-depth interviews with fixed-term scholars in political science and history, the findings show that respondents jointly referred to competition and delivery in order to make sense of their current situation. Forming what I call the project frame, these interpretive orientations were legitimized by various organizational routines within the studied departments, feeding into a dominant regime of valuation and accumulation. However, while the content of the project frame is well-defined, attempts to align with it vary, indicating the importance of disciplines and academic age when navigating project-based careers. Furthermore, this way of framing academic work and careers provokes tensions and conflicts that junior scholars try to manage. To curb their competitive relationship and enable cooperation, respondents emphasized the outcome of project funding as ‘being lucky.’ They also drew on imagined futures to envision alternative scripts of success and worth. Both empirically and conceptually, the article contributes to an understanding of academic career-making as a kind of pragmatic problem-solving, centered on navigating multiple career pressures and individual aspirations.

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Project work strategies in fusion research

Cited by 4 publications

References 35 publications

Suspending failure: temporalities, ontologies, and gigantism in fusion energy development

Suspending failure: temporalities, ontologies, and gigantism in fusion energy development

Public Sector Projectification – A Systematic Review of the Literature

Between Delivery and Luck: Projectification of Academic Careers and Conflicting Notions of Worth at the Postdoc Level

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