An Atlas of Academic Practice in Digital Times

Abstract In the current literature on the university it is generally accepted that processes of digitization play an important role regarding both the daily functioning of the university as an institution and the academics that give shape to it. This article contributes to our understanding of the role that digitization plays in contemporary academic practices and does this by adopting a relational theoretical framework informed by sociomaterial studies. Furthermore, the article introduces a specific interview technique as methodological approach and makes use of topological visualizations in order to qualitatively analyze the composition of academic work in digital times. As such, combining textual and visual analysis, the article should be conceived as an explorative atlas. The atlas gives an account of how daily academic practices are relationally composed, by focusing on the spatiotemporal constellations enacted in these practices, and on how the digital acts and operates in these practices. Based on three profiles of academic practices, this atlas concludes by exploring whether contemporary academic practices are characterized by a typical mode of existence, and gives some pointers as to how this mode of existence of the university is typically enacted nowadays.