home cooked theory

Last chapter

I am finally writing the last chapter of my book. It is the one called “Long hours, high bandwith: Negotiating domesticity at a distance”.
This chapter illustrates how office and home space are each transformed and rendered visible as ambient technologies allow a widening number of close companions throughout the working day. The “full time [...]

International Women’s Day

This afternoon the Women and Work Research Group at the University of Sydney held a special event for International Women’s Day. I was asked to present some of my research from the Working From Home study. Here is a copy of the text from my talk, and a powerpoint presentation for those interested in some [...]

Boo hoo blues

I went on holiday last month for the first time ever, I think, since I began working in academia. Of course, there have been lots of trips before – many that wouldn’t have happened without a job to pay for the airfare – but they have all involved work. The exceptions have been holidays spent [...]

Smart choices

Thanks so much to New Matilda for publishing this piece just before the conference. I tried to crystallize some of the things mentioned here in recent days and months.
See you on Thursday, I hope!

Related reading #SOI09

With thanks to Tammi and Jen…
The RED Report: The contribution of sessional teachers to higher education, Australian Learning and Teaching Council, 2008
From the introduction, by Professor Rob Castle, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic and International), University of Wollongong:
To maintain for permanent staff the ideal of being teaching and research academics, we have had to rely on [...]

Women in research

A new report shows that women’s progress in science has stalled over the past 15 years. While this won’t sound like news to many, I was shocked to read the statistic on how many women are Federation Fellows (8.5%). When you add that to other recent news stories, particularly with regard to the ongoing pay [...]

In unity

**We urgently need billets for the State of the Industry conference. There has been an amazing response from young interstate scholars wanting to come, and we’ve funded airfares for everyone we could, but some people won’t attend if they can’t get accommodation. Please let me know if you can offer a bed or a couch.**
Taking [...]

Active campuses

It’s great to see two big campaigns hitting campuses at the moment. Today’s rally for international students is a great initiative that deserves serious attention. We hear a lot about the value of the international student market to the national economy, which is why Julia Gillard is overseas right now at her most eloquent. But [...]

Privacy and work

Today’s class was about intimacy and privacy, and it drew on the work of Michael Warner and Michel Foucault to talk about publics, discourse, power and confession. We read Emily Nussbaum’s article, “Kids, the Internet and the end of Privacy” which argues that the generation gap between those who up with the internet and those [...]

Overload

Think your job is bad? Read this. Overload reports on “the role of work-volume escalation and micro-management of academic work patterns in loss of morale and collegiality at UWS.”
Apart from highlighting the inadequacies of workload formulae across every level of academic life, it’s also one of the best reports I’ve read showing the [...]

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