Beyond Interruption
Care, Epistemic Distance and the Temporal Politics of Academic Value
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24229853 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Patrícia Albergaria Almeida (0000-0002-3826-0401, Universidade Aberta) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-19 |
| Publication date | 2026-08-03 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Australian Feminist Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1321-7568 • E-ISSN: 1465-3303 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/08164649.2026.2712251 |
| OpenAlex | W7172327505 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 28 |
Academic careers are commonly evaluated through temporal norms that privilege continuity, acceleration and cumulative output. Within such regimes, care-related non-linearity is often framed as interruption, absence or reduced productivity. This article develops a feminist conceptual analysis of care, time and academic value, drawing on care ethics, feminist epistemology and scholarship on academic labour, to challenge this deficit framing. Rather than asking only how care constrains academic participation, it examines how care-shaped trajectories expose the assumptions through which productivity becomes academic value.The article advances three arguments. First, it distinguishes care as relational ontology, social practice and epistemic orientation, arguing that care reshapes not only the conditions of academic work but also the forms of attention and knowledge-making it can sustain. Second, it conceptualises academic productivity as a temporal and epistemic value regime that shapes what kinds of knowledge become recognisable and institutionally valuable. Third, it introduces epistemic distance as a temporally produced condition through which assumptions of academic value become available for critique.The article contributes to feminist debates on academic labour by shifting analysis from participation to epistemic recognition, showing how care-related non-linearity reveals what academia is willing, or unable, to know under dominant productivity regimes.
academic careers · academic values · academic work · Care · care ethics · epistemic distance · epistemic recognition · Feminist epistemology · interruptions · knowledge-making · nonlinearity · Relational Ontology · temporal politics · Feminism, Gender, and Intersectionality · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies · University Challenges and Reforms
How to do Social Science that Matters
Gender and Precarious Research Careers
Part-Time for All
Collaborating with care
Living a Feminist Life
Naming under constraint
Who can “slow down” in the neoliberal academy? Reflections on the politics of time as an early-career feminist geographer in Switzerland
Suspended, Not Absent
What affective rupture does. Disrupting affective citizenship in migrant solidarity
The role and power of individuals in building a caring European post-pandemic higher education
Co-constructing new ways of working
The cost of ‘care’ in neoliberal academia during the Covid-19 pandemic
The “new normal” of academia in pandemic times
Precarity, gender and care in the neoliberal academy
(Re)‐Enacting Academia Otherwise
Exploring caring collaborations in academia through feminist reflexive dialogues
Working Double Shifts in the Capitalist University
Matters of care in technoscience
Living a Feminist Life
Women and gender equity in academia through the conceptual lens of care
Situated Knowledges
Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies
Rankings and Reactivity
| Highly cited | No |
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