Early Career Network: Slow Scholarship

In recent decades, several international “slow movements” have spawned, united by their resistance towards efficiency and acceleration in the modern world. These include 'slow food', 'slow tourism' and 'slow art'. Of course, these movements are not without criticism. And yet, slowness need not be technophobic, nostalgic, elitist or privileged, but an orientation towards our everyday practices with a “commitment to occupy time more attentively” (Parkins, 2004, p. 363).

In their book, The Slow Professor, Berg and Seeber (2016) consider the value of adopting slowness in the university, where a culture of speed proliferates. They argue that “[in] the corporate university… economic justifications dominate, and the familiar “bottom line” eclipses pedagogical and intellectual concerns.” Instead, “slow professors advocate deliberation over acceleration… time to think… time for reflection and open-ended inquiry [that is] not a luxury but crucial to what we do” (Berg and Seeber, 2016, p. x).  

In this one-day event, Dr Alison Brady will first present her research on the key ideas that tie together the “slow movements”. Collaboratively, we will think about how this applies to the reality of early career research in the university. We will then strategize possible ways of preserving time for slowness in our practices – however small – amidst the competing demands many of us experience.

We will then put these into practice through a structured reading and writing retreat. Unlike typical academic retreats that focus on sharing and achieving a particular goal set out in advance, we will instead speak about our starting points for writing. These might include: texts we have been grappling with but can find no ‘use’ for, the seeds of ideas we have been thinking about but haven’t had the time to do anything with, the reading we have been meaning to get around to but that has fallen by the wayside.

In doing so, we will create a space in which slowness can be momentarily preserved, as well as thinking about ways of creating moments of slowness in our future practice, outside of the logic of efficiency that permeates much of what we do in the contemporary university.

Draft programme for the day

• 9:30-10:00: coffee and introductions
• 9:30- 11.00: Discussion around what the "slow movements" are and ideas that tie them together 
• 11.00 - 11.30: break
• 11.30 - 12:30: Strategising ways of preserving 'slowness' in our practice
• 12.30 - 1.30: lunch break
• 1.30- 4.00: A reading and writing session that tries to put these ideas into practice, with built in breaks to be decided collectively
• 4.00- 4.30: Reflection, feedback, future plans, networking

Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash