‘Doing Time’: Temporal Imaginaries, Performances, Practices, Infrastructures

Session Submission Type: Traditional (Closed) Panel

Abstract

STS treatments of the temporal in knowledge production are scattered yet non-negligible (Traweek 1988; Pickering 1995; Bruyninckx 2017; Felt 2017; Vostal et al. 2018). Drawing on the emergent insights from studies of scientific and academic times, the panel’s contributions aim to advance this scholarship by addressing how time horizons in research are imagined (i.e. how futures and pasts are construed and (re)invented), how time is performed (that is, how time is accounted for, under which circumstances and imperatives, e.g. time-sheets) and practiced (i.e. how various research-related activities assume unforeseeable duration) in different research contexts. The panel will also explore temporal infrastructures inherent to various institutional configurations in which research conduct takes place. The main objective of the panel is to examine how intersections of different temporal variables and dimension co-shape research processes and outputs as well as lives in science. Specific attention will be paid to scientific ‘trans-temporalities’, that is sites of research where different (indigenous, ‘the other’, non-western, western, northern, European) temporal habits and ideologies interact in research practices. This might include scientific groups/labs where temporalities and rhythms of different technologies, cultures and individual temporal approaches intersect; indigenous and 'other' subjects with their own distinct temporalities and how they are 'made' to interact and often comply with dominant western temporalities (or not); modes and technologies of synchronisation of diverse and often clashing temporalities in research contexts.

Sub Unit

• Closed Panels

Chair

• Ulrike Felt, University of Vienna, Department of Science and Technology Studies

Individual Presentations

• Trading with beamtime: Temporal economy in experimental physics - Filip Vostal, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences

• Academic waiting games: A paradox in an accelerated academy? - Ulrike Felt, University of Vienna, Department of Science and Technology Studies

• The experimental rhythms of academic work - Fabian Cannizzo, RMIT University

• The performativity of permanent and temporal practice: The role of technology infusion - Natalie Hardwicke, University of Sydney

Session Organizer

• Filip Vostal, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences