This paper describes how academics in UK universities navigate the changes they experience in language and literacy demands, driven by changes in the higher education environment such as managerialism and digitisation. It explores the tensions generated by these changes and reflects on their impact on the academic workplace.
This paper draws on ethnographically-informed research in the UK, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, with 70 academics across different disciplines and different universities, exploring the changes they have experienced in the language and literacy practices associated with their work. The paper will describe how such changes are driven by transformations in many aspects of the higher education environment, including policies at the national and international level and managerial practices in institutions. Digital technologies have enabled changes in teaching and research practices, such as teaching across great distances, or facilitating the co-ordination of research between researchers based in many different countries, which have changed the nature of the everyday work done by academics. Social media have made new forms of communication and public presentation possible with different audiences, generating new sets of expectations and requiring academics to rapidly master new genres. Digital technologies have also placed new literacy demands on academics in relation to rapid communication, constant availability, and engagement with centrally-managed systems for the production of accounts and evaluations of their professional activities. The academics in our research described their experience of these changes, and how they learned to navigate them in their everyday working lives. The paper will explore the tensions generated by these changes and open up space to reflect on the impact of these on the nature of academia as a workplace, including in the light of the vastly transformed working conditions we have all experienced under the Covid-19 pandemic.
