Accommodations: staff identity and university space |
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| Authors: | Andrew Cox Tim Herrick Patrick Keating |
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| Institution: | 1. Information School , University of Sheffield , Regent Court, 211 Portobello Street, Sheffield , S1 4DP , UK a.m.cox@sheffield.ac.uk;3. Institute for Lifelong Learning , University of Sheffield , 196-198 West Street, Sheffield , S1 4ET , UK;4. Academic Unit of Ophthalmology and Orthoptics , Univeristy of Sheffield , Floor K, Beech Hill Road, Sheffield , S10 2RX , UK |
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| Abstract: | Space has been of growing significance in social theory in recent years, yet, explorations of it in the scholarship of higher education have been limited. This is surprising, given the critical role space has in shaping staff and students' engagement with the university. Taking a practice-based approach and focusing on academic identities, this article analyses the spatial experience of an institution by defamiliarising spaces encountered in everyday work. We identify formative pressures upon institutional space, and how space then shapes experience: university spaces are designed for one purpose but come to be used for many, so that working within them can be a diverse and contradictory experience. The identification of academics with spaces is complex, and there are no simple experiences of belonging; rather, there is a constant project of identity-formation and change within mutable spaces. |
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| Keywords: | space academic identity practice theory field habitus |
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