Connor Goddard
https://doi.org/10.60152/3utwwwox
Abstract: Throughout the everyday, our perceptions around work ahead of us is routinely negotiated, yet consistently pre-determined. While clear desks and empty calendars may signal certain freedoms through the workday, academic structures, semesters, and deadlines can be viewed a disturbance from delving deeply into tasks often neglected. While often painted into our work as a requirement for certain individuals within the academy, research can be neglected, not through desire, nor purposefully, yet due to the constrained nature of our work. Here, research can be viewed as the newly acquired LEGO set, sitting unopened on a shelf ready to be built, yet requiring time, and space, to do so. Often, our own research can be left unopened, or built slowly, rather than being valued as the passion projects many of us hope such practice to be. While fulfilment can often be achieved through this slower means of production, a deeper investment and dedication to the task is often desired. This is not to say that work otherwise lacks personal value, meaning, or fulfilment – quite the opposite. Instead, we, as academics, find ways of pulling research into other work (i.e. teaching), shaping positive pedagogical outcomes and through knowledge production. In many cases, further opportunities and passions emerge from this deep investment in student success and through the facilitation of learning. This contribution aims to express the fine line between passion-projects and practicalities walked by many throughout the academy. Through personal examples developed through teaching practice and in ongoing work towards the completion of PhD research, this submission touches on both the challenges, and the rewards which can be reaped through involvement and investment in the diverse structures and dynamic day-to-day practices as part of tertiary education. Notably, this submission frames such academic challenges and opportunities through a geographic lens, drawing on case study examples of rural retirement migration, and the complex entanglements of decision-making in later-life currently being explored through PhD research in Western Australia.
How to cite this Paper (Harvard referencing style):
Goddard, C. (2025) ‘Passion and Practicalities: Exploring distraction, routine, and production through geographic teaching and research in Western Australia‘, in R. Bogdanović (ed.) On Architecture — Crosscutting and Fusion of Disciplines, Proceedings. Belgrade, Serbia: STRAND, pp. 54–58.
See publication On Architecture (2025) Conference Proceedings