Accelerated life in academic capitalism: PhD student’s time experience in project work

Abstract In the context of accelerated knowledge production, projectification is a typical form of work under academic capitalism, profoundly reshaping the practice and conditions of academic research. The doctoral students’ experience of time in research projects contributes to understand the consequences of the extension of the time system within projectification to the doctoral student in academic capitalism. Based on semi-structured interviews with 12 doctoral students, this article explores what kind of discomforts and difficulties pose for doctoral students caused by time constraints in projects and how they cope with the challenges. Employing 4C (Compress, Commodification, Control, Colonisation) model of project time, four patterns of negative effects caused by time conflicts are summarised. By the lens of value orientation, considering four modes of strategies to time tension depending on whether achievement-oriented or self-care-oriented, students are identified as Balancers, Realists, the Resilient, and Avoiders. This article develops the application of the 4C model in doctoral students’ academic time regimes and the four modes of their strategies, which contributes to an understanding of doctoral students’ perceptions of temporal tension in projectification and their initiative embedded in structural conditions of the academic capitalism.