Alessandra Migliore’s dissertation “In search of an alternative workspace: Disclosing academics’ spatial practices and productivity within and beyond the campus” explores academic workspaces. Specifically, this PhD research explores academics’ spatial practices for research on- and off-campus and the role of the physical workspaces in influencing the choice to work either on- or off-campus, stimulating academic productivity, and shaping the academic work experience. The research aimed at (a) identifying academics’ location choices for research activities among university, home, and other third spaces; (b) measuring the effects of these location choices on- and off-campus on academic productivity; and (c) understanding key spatial implications of academic work in those multiple locations (university, home, and other third spaces). To reach these objectives, this thesis adopts a mixed-method approach, including econometric analysis of survey data (7,865 responses) on the whole population of Italian tenured academics, secondary data, scraped from public databases on academic productivity (i.e., Scopus Database), and interviews with academics from three public universities in Milan as well as visual data. Drawing upon these analyses, this thesis posits four important scientific contributions.
First, this research brings new empirical evidence about academic location choices by recognizing four clusters: Home-centric, Between home and university, Multi-located and University-centric. Second, this research synthetizes the different determinants of location choices in academia. Each of the four clusters is explained by different determinants. Mostly, work-related factors (i.e., discipline) influence location choices. However, workspace-related factors (i.e., on-campus workspace spatial quality, the need for a laboratory and commuting time) are crucial factors for work location decisions. Finally, private life-related factors (i.e., living with school children or a partner) and demographic factors (i.e., gender) push academics in increasing work-from-home. Third, this thesis finds that working from the university during the Covid-19 pandemic increases academic productivity more than any other location choice, while working from home negatively influences productivity. Noteworthy, the relation between each location choice and academic productivity strongly depends on the characteristics of the workspace at home and on-campus as well as on individual traits such as gender. Fourth, referring to Lefebvre’s spatial theory, this thesis reveals how academics produce their workspace within and beyond the boundaries of their university campuses. Spatial practices across multiple workspaces span from losing the workspace in favour of the accelerated rhythms of academic work and university obligations (i.e., domination of space), towards recovering the workspace through strategies for protecting work freedom and autonomy (i.e., appropriation of space).
From a practical perspective, this thesis identifies some approaches that universities decision makers and academics themselves should consider when designing future policies and future spaces for academic work. The thesis can be accessed here: https://www.politesi.polimi.it/handle/10589/194929
Links to related papers:
- Does Workspace Design Influence Where Academics Work? (working paper available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4766895)
- Cluster analysis. Grouping workers by work location choice (book chapter available at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.1201/9781003289845-7/cluster-analysis-alessandra-migliore-cristina-rossi-lamastra)
- Working from Home, the Physical Space and the Gender Gap in Productivity: Evidence from Academia (working paper available at: https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/AMPROC.2023.14304abstract )
- Lost and Found: Academics’ Spatial Practices Across Multiple Workspaces (working paper available at: https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/AMPROC.2023.15148abstract)
- Changing Academics’ Ways of Working: Towards a Distributed University Campus (available at: https://press.ierek.com/index.php/ARChive/article/view/880)