Work autonomy, low degree of formalization, and unconventional organizational structure character-ize academic work. These features make academics free to choose their work location, differently from other knowledge workers, whose work location choices are more constrained. In recent decades, thanks to the diffusion of information and communication technologies, academics have increasingly performed their research work outside university campuses, in off-campus locations (e.g., their own houses, public libraries, dedicated laboratories, firm premises, or even coworking spaces, cafés, and parks). The university campus moved beyond a static space to a more blurred place that alternatively includes multiple locations (i.e., the university, the home, and other third spaces). The recent pandemic exacerbated this trend. Despite the increasing diffusion of this phenomenon, up to now, scholars have paid little attention to why and how academics choose the location of their research work. Moreover, it is not clear whether such choices influence their work outcomes.
This PhD project 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 ac-ademic productivity, and shaping the academic work experience. Overall, this thesis takes advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic period as a privileged time frame to study academic work. This research aims at providing a first interpretation of the disruptive Covid-working period and its potential long-term consequences on academic work. Namely, this research aims at (a) identifying academics’ loca-tion 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) understand-ing 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 analy-sis 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 22 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 fac-tors (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 aca-demic productivity more than any other location choice, while working from home negatively influ-ences 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 indi-vidual traits such as gender.
Fourth, referring to Lefebvre’s spatial theory, this thesis reveals how academics produce their work-space 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 aca-demic work.