Overview

The chapters in this book grapple in varying ways with Barbara Adam's concept of timescapes, which provides a powerful metaphor that extends the imagery of landscapes to enable an understanding of time as entwined with space, conceptually drawn and constituted experientially. Space-time is deeply relational, contextual and experiential, forming overarching narratives of higher education, its purpose and its future. As timescapes become in/visibilised and subsumed, in various ways and in different contexts, into hegemonic discourses of individual responsibility and choice, new temporal framings must then be carefully re-negotiated and self-managed by students and teachers. The chapters thus draw on theoretical and empirical contributions to examine intersecting pressures and [im]possibilities across different timescapes in higher education. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Teaching in Higher Education.