Curating Care-Full Spaces: Doctoral Students Negotiating Study from Home

What is this research about?

This research is about the importance of physical space. It discusses the intersections and challenges of doing doctoral research (research as a PhD student) in a home where a student  may also need to care for others, particularly children and older family members (care work) . The authors focus on “the home” as a space where these two kinds of work cross over, even if seeming to contradict one another.  Throughout the paper, the reader is encouraged to think critically about the time and space constraints involved in completing  a PhD and the policies in place that make these conditions so.   This critical analysis links the work to questions of equity and access.

The methodology employed for this study was collaborative autoethnography. The two researchers wrote about their own experiences engaging in  both care work and academic study from their homes, writing both what happened, and the meanings attached to their stories. This makes a connection between the personal (their individual stories) and the political (broader issues of access and equity in the academy).  The researchers explored the topics of care, study, and space in their stories, which were written guided by memory, emails, messages, and diaries.  Then, they exchanged their stories, asked each other questions, and helped improve the stories to create the final versions. Once the stories were solidified, they read and reread the writing to analyse and identify patterns and themes. Finally, they compared these findings to relevant research.

What did the researchers find?

Policies regarding PhD study often make assumptions about the privilege of students in graduate school. Focusing solely on academic work  requires major privileges   because many students may additionally need to attend to social, economic, cultural, disability, and other needs they have. These needs arise out of  the financial, spatial, and time-based requirements of graduate school such as high tuition costs and the amount of time it takes to complete a degree.     Further, the university presumes that PhD work happens in a vacuum where students do not have further responsibilities to attend to, such as caretaking responsibilities. There is also a gap in the literature about non-institutional space and the ways that equity concerns of PhD students who  work from home may be amplified.

The analysis of the autoethnographies  revealed the following:

• The authors see physical space as significant to work and wellbeing. They recognize “the home” as a physical space where students can combine schoolwork and care work.
• Combining schoolwork and care work in the home is both freeing and isolating for students: It allows them to complete their PhD even though they have care responsibilities but may close them off from opportunities gained by “being visible” on campus.
• Students perceive there to be negative judgments against caregivers in the university as well as perceived expectations that a graduate student should always be available and working on their research.
• Being positioned in a space that necessitates both school and care work means that these individuals need to be creative with how they balance them. The authors focus on the agency and ingenuity of students’ solutions and encourage other scholars to think beyond “deficit positionings”.
• Although creative in their solutions, in some cases these students feel a tension between care and academic work and feel the need to wholly separate them. This is rooted in the perceived expectation that they must always be available and working on their research.
• There is also worry of being “outed” as a caregiver which can prevent students from seeking support or taking time off.
• The authors point to the gendered aspects of care work, but caution against assuming that all care work is done by women.

How can you use this research?

This research can help people find comfort in their own atypical study spaces and work settings.  This is especially important in the COVID-19 context where many people are having to navigate both care and academic work within the same time and space. This research  can also help provide a care-related analysis of graduate school policy attentive to the time and space in which learning occurs. This can  guide thinking around the different unexpected spaces and responsibilities students may be navigating. The research encourages flexibility, compassion, and understanding for graduate students, acknowledging the different circumstances from which they may be engaging in their academic work.

James Burford, PhD, Lecturer in Research Education and Development at La Trobe University (Australia). Twitter: @jiaburford.

Genine Hook, PhD, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of New England (Australia).