Conference Program

The metaphor of the Ivory Tower suggests that academics’ ways of working have always been hidden from view, slightly mysterious. This has increasingly become the case post-pandemic, as more academics choose to work remotely, allowing us to even hide our practice from our colleagues. Despite the freedom to work flexibly there is also an increased notion of surveillance, with departments keeping track of the number of REF-able outputs, grant money secured, and enterprise projects completed. Due to recent articles that draw attention to the stress, burnout and quiet quitting that is happening among academics, some universities or departments have implemented initiatives to ‘support’ academics with managing mental health and well-being (Ahola et al., 2017; Hyatt, 2022). At my institution, as we approach REF2029, increasing focus has been placed on ‘helping’ us to produce 4* publications. Emails are sent asking us to report how many articles we are currently writing, which journals we hope to submit to, and what kind of support we need to help us with these outputs. Recently, my department has instituted CORS (Concentrated Research and Scholarship) weeks, once per term. Essentially, they are protected weeks that we are supposed to dedicate to research and writing. “Of course, normal work commitments must still be met in full” (internal email, 22/10/25). This innovation is a perfect example of something designed to promote productivity while ignoring the real-life commitments of staff, who are still required to handle their normal workload whilst also focusing on contributions to the financial gain and standing of the department.

This paper will draw on a sociomaterial approach to explore two examples of initiatives I have experienced that were designed to promote research productivity and academic writing. The first is the CORS week described above, the second is a writing day for early career researchers hosted by the British Academy. The concepts of breakdown and repair (Zhang, Oliver, Littlejohn & Henry, 2025) will be helpful in exploring how certain assemblages encourage and impede the development of a productive community. Zhang et al. (2025) stated that breakdowns can often reveal something deeper than technological problems – they can draw attention to issues within the environment that we take for granted and that might need to be challenged or repaired. The focus on repair allows us to see how some groups might repair or manage these barriers or challenges while others might not, revealing factors that might explain the sense of community achieved by different groups.

While writing retreats or groups are not particularly innovative (Mattsson et al., 2020), given our increasingly digitised and remote ways of working, perhaps they do seem progressive. Finding time to disconnect from our normal working lives, to stop checking our emails, to unplug from the false urgency of working in academia, to reconnect with a community of scholars, can help us to slow down and actually enjoy a creative element of academic work.