Papers by Andrew Glover
We appreciate the time and contribution of all the householders and energy stakeholders who parti... more We appreciate the time and contribution of all the householders and energy stakeholders who participated in this research and shared their valuable insights. This project was funded by Energy Consumers Australia Limited (www.energyconsumersaustralia.com.au) as part of its grants process for consumer advocacy projects and research projects for the benefit of consumers of electricity and natural gas. The views expressed in this document do not necessarily reflect the views of the Energy Consumers Australia. We would also like to thank the members of the Expert Panel for the Future Grid project for their advice and feedback:
Academic Flying and the Means of Communication
Mobilities scholarship has paid considerable attention to the forms of presence enabled by air tr... more Mobilities scholarship has paid considerable attention to the forms of presence enabled by air travel in hypermobile organisations (Elliott & Urry, 2010; Strengers, 2015; Storme et al., 2017). However, there has been less focus on the absences that these presences simultaneously generate. This chapter develops the concept of ‘absent presences’ enabled through the practices and policies of academic hypermobility. The chapter draws on qualitative interviews with 24 Australian-based academics, alongside a review of university policies that are relevant to air travel. We use these data to explore ‘absent presence’ in academic air travel. First, we suggest that there is an assumption in academia that embodied presence is required for authentic modes of knowledge sharing and networking, primarily at conferences and meetings. Yet this type of presence abroad requires that one is absent from home for extended periods. Second, we show how absent presence exists in academic policies concernin...
Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy
Academia, as many other sectors, has faced wide-ranging disruptions due to COVID-19, with teachin... more Academia, as many other sectors, has faced wide-ranging disruptions due to COVID-19, with teaching and research activity conducted entirely online in many countries. Before the pandemic grounded travel, academics were often hypermobile, some traveling more than 150,000 kilometers per year for conferences, board meetings, collaborations, fieldwork,seminars, and lectures. It is no surprise then that academic flying is among the leading causes of universities' greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. Despite growing awareness surrounding GHG emissions from flying and calls for reducing aeromobility, academics have continued to travel. The COVID-19 pandemic, in equitably stopping all flying, offers a unique opportunity to study emerging low-GHG modes of academic internationalization. In this article, we look at academic internationalization, inspired by digital ethnography, to explore how the academic landscape has adapted to meet internationalization goals within the context of a sudden grounding of travel. By investigating flight-free academic internationalization, we illuminate some of the implications and discuss potential opportunities and challenges of achieving less GHG intensive academic internationalization.
Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy
This article analyzes how certain forms of unsustainable hypermobilityprimarily air travelare emb... more This article analyzes how certain forms of unsustainable hypermobilityprimarily air travelare embedded in the institutional orientations of Australian universities, and hence, into the professional practices of academics in the country. Academic air travel is commonly recognized as a key component of a scholar's ability to cultivate and maintain international collaborations, achieve high-impact journal publications and win large research grants. Despite the environmental sustainability implications that regular international and domestic air travel entails, a normative system of 'academic aeromobility' has developed. We discuss the results of a qualitative textual analysis of Australian university-sustainability policies as well as research and internationalization strategies. We find that the ambitions of academic institutions to reduce carbon emissions from air travel are discordant with broader policies and strategic orientations around international mobility. These findings foreground the paradoxical relationship between many university-sustainability policies and the sector's broader strategic aims of internationalization and mobility of staff and students, suggesting the limits to piecemeal approaches to organizational policy and practices pertaining to sustainability. We conclude by discussing the role of technology and 'slow scholarship' as a means to reduce academic aeromobility.
Characterising elements of practice: the contours of altruistic material divestment
J. of Design Research, 2015
Conference Presentations by Andrew Glover
This paper discusses how certain forms of hypermobility-primarily air travel-are embedded in the ... more This paper discusses how certain forms of hypermobility-primarily air travel-are embedded in the institutional orientations of Australian universities, and hence, into the professional practices of Australian academics. Academic air travel is currently a key component of one's ability to cultivate and maintain 'network capital' (Larsen et al. 2008). Such forms of extended social capital are seen as promoting one's ability to access the most prized elements of the academic career-international collaborations, high-impact journal publications, and research grants. In this sense, a system of 'academic aeromobility' has developed, in spite of the social and environmental implications that regular international & domestic air travel entails. Here, we discuss the results of a review of Australian university sustainability policies, and research & internationalization strategies. We find that the ambitions for universities to reduce carbon emissions by air travel are discordant with broader policies & institutional orientations around international mobility. These findings raise questions of how systems of mobility are developed and maintained in a professional setting, and how existing policies and practices co-evolve and change as part of a globalized research environment. 2 Introduction Air travel is an increasingly central part of the successful academic career. Academic mobility is increasingly viewed as a necessity for forging, cultivating, and maintaining remote collaborations and partnerships. Despite the availability of ways to communicate remotely in real time, such as through video-conferencing, flying is still commonly perceived as a necessity for these endeavours. Yet at the same time, Australian universities are attempting to reduce their environmental impacts and carbon emissions. This may involve a number of measures from individual institutional commitments to broader tertiary sector agreements such as the Talloires Declaration (Talloires Declaration Institutional Signatories List 2016). While some Australian universities have acknowledged that air travel is a source of carbon emissions, generally the policies to reduce these emissions are limited in scope (Glover et al. 2015). Explicit reduction strategies are even less common, but where they exist there is an assumption that the activities for which academics undertake air travel can be substituted by video-conferencing, or can be otherwise 'greened'. Such strategies fail to acknowledge the broad spectrum of practices that air travel facilitates in relation to research, teaching, conference attendance, and other academic activities. University sustainability policies that seek to reduce a university's air travel emissions are also isolated from the broader strategic directions of the university, which are commonly configured toward internationalization-particularly in the Australian context. This impetus to internationalise universities is explicitly bound up in a suite of practices, which necessitate or prioritise air travel, and which academics are expected to participate in to become 'successful'. Contemporary priorities in the academic career place a strong emphasis on the need to connect and build remote and international collaborative relationships with others. The strategic direction of internationalisation has expectations of air travel embedded within it, as we show that both staff and student mobility is emphasised as a desirable and necessary. The systemic nature of this emphasis – not merely the choices of individual academics who choose to fly – can be said to constitute a system of 'academic aeromobility'. The objective of this paper then, is to highlight the competing priorities – between sustainability and internationalisation – of many Australian universities. These priorities are difficult to reconcile because of the nature of air travel as an intensively carbon emitting activity. We argue that proposed solutions to the reliance on air travel must entail challenging global conventions of academic aeromobility as being central to a successful academic career. This could involve finding ways of creating more meaningful interactions through digitally mediated co-presence, or shifting the priorities and practices of academic careers to emphasise more localized connections that do not require air travel to maintain. Methods This paper draws on an analysis of a qualitative review of Australian university websites with respect to two types of policy documentation. Firstly, sustainability
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Papers by Andrew Glover
Conference Presentations by Andrew Glover