Overcoming remoteness: the necessity of air travel in Australian universities

ABSTRACT

Air travel has become central to Australian academic practice, with flying increasingly seen as crucial to the progression of successful academic careers. This paper seeks to understand why academic air travel has come to be perceived as so necessary, particularly given its significant environmental, social, and economic implications. Drawing on the mobilities paradigm and social practice theory, we seek to understand how air travel practices are a key part of contemporary academic careers. We conducted an online survey of 301 academics and 24 in depth semi-structured interviews to understand academic air travel in Australia, finding that it is seen as a means to connect and collaborate within and between academic communities, and to counteract the effects of ‘remoteness'. This remoteness is experienced domestically and internationally, by Australian academics who feel they must travel to perceived centres of knowledge production to further their careers. Academics often frame their ‘need' for connections as necessarily involving physical co-presence. Air travel offers career benefits for those who can take advantage of it, and corresponding drawbacks for those ‘stuck on the ground’. We conclude by discussing the need for valuing localised forms of collaboration as markers of success, and developing imaginative alternatives to academic flying.

KEYWORDS:

• Air travel
• academia
• sustainability
• collaboration
• mobility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Andrew Glover is a Research Fellow at the Digital Ethnography Research Centre and the Sustainable Urban Precincts Program (SUPP), an RMIT University initiative to research and implement sustainability on and off campus. His current research focuses on practices of academic air travel, conferencing, remote presence and digital engagement. More broadly, Andrew is interested in theories of practice and their relevance to debates about sustainable consumption and mobility.

Tania Lewis is the director of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre and professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. Her research critically engages with the politics of lifestyle, sustainability and consumption, and with global media and digital cultures. Tania's book Digital Food: From Paddock to Platform will be published by Bloomsbury Press in February 2020.

Yolande Strengers is a digital sociologist and human-computer interaction scholar investigating the sustainability and gender effects of digital, emerging and smart technologies. At Monash University, she leads the energy futures theme in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab, which undertakes critical interdisciplinary and international research into the social, cultural and experiential dimensions of the design, use and futures of new and emerging technologies.

ORCID

Andrew Glover http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5786-0285

Tania Lewis http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2855-5644

Yolande Strengers http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5664-621X

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Sustainable Urban Precincts Project (SUPP) and the Work Life Ecologies Project (worklifeecologies.org) funded by RMIT University.