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This article examines how research-funding expectations shape the “figured worlds” of 16 mid-career Ontario academics in education, social work, sociology, and geography across seven universities. Three themes emerge: funding, challenges, and the “fast professor.” Participants describe relentless time demands, struggles in daily life, and how positioning by gender and race may affect research production. 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McGinn2  \n1 University of Toronto  \n2 Brock University  \nAbstract  \nHeightened pressures to publish prolifically and secure external funding stand in stark contrast to the slow scholarship movement. This article explores ways in which research funding expectations permeate the “figured worlds” of 16 mid-career academics in education, social work, sociology, and geography in seven universities in Ontario, Canada. Participants demonstrated a steady record of research accomplishment and a commitment to social justice in their work. The analysis identified three themes related to the competing pressures these academics described in their day-to-day lives: funding, challenges, and the fast professor. Participants spoke about their research funding achievements and struggles. In some cases, they explained how their positioning, including gender and race, might have affected their research production, compared to colleagues positioned differently. Their social justice research is funded, but some suspect at a lower level than colleagues studying conventional topics. Challenges might be located in the backstage (personal and home lives) or the frontstage (university or funding agency policies or embedded in the research itself) . In aiming for the impossible standards of a continuously successful research record, these individuals worked “all the time.” Advocates claim that slow scholarship is not really about going slower but rather about maintaining quality and caring in one’s work; yet, participants’ accounts suggest they perceive few options other than to perform as “fast professors.” At mid-career, they question whether and how they can keep up this aspect of their figured worlds for 20 or more years.  \nKeywords: research funding , grants, slow scholarship , mid-career , time, academia  \n* [sandra.acker@utoronto.ca](sandra.acker@utoronto.ca)  \nThe extensive national and international attention garnered by Berg and Seeber’s (2016) Slow Professor reflects a growing social interest in adopting a considered and humane pace of academic life where quality supersedes quantity. Yet , as we shall show, this slow scholarship model contrasts sharply with the experience described by a selection of mid-career academics from Ontario (Canada) universities. Drawing on figured worlds theory (Holland et al. , 1998), we explore the ways in which these academics understand and negotiate their local research cultures. They describe a hectic pace, driven by internal commitments and external expectations around research funding and productivity, yet hampered by many competing responsibilities. The figured worlds evident in their descriptions prompted us to label these individuals as “fast professors.”  \nThese fast professors emerge within the context of the “research imperative”(Gumport, 1991) that motivates universities to strategize about ways to rise within institutional hierarchies and rankings. For individual scholars, this imperative translates into a mantra of “publish or perish ,”and increasingly, “funding or famine” (Quake, 2009) .  \nIn an earlier study (Acker & Wagner, 2019), academics across several countries reported that describing their research as feminist could limit its funding potential. We wondered about the extent to which commitments to social justice research more broadly might be perceived to influence funding potential either positively or negatively in Canada , a country that is often considered socially progressive.  \nThe purpose of this article is to explore the ways mid-career academics committed to social justice understand and respond to contemporary pressures around securing and carrying out externally funded research. The next three sectio","cbCaijIPTh6pf6bx","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaijIPTh6pf6bx","pdf",157699,"English","# Abstract\n# Theoretical Framework\n## Figured Worlds Theory\n# Purpose and Research Focus\n# Context: The Research Imperative and Fast Professors","[{\"question\":\"What tension does the article examine between publishing pressures and slow scholarship?\",\"answer\":\"The article contrasts heightened pressures to publish and secure external funding with the slow scholarship movement’s emphasis on quality and humane pace.\"},{\"question\":\"Who are the study participants and what disciplines are represented?\",\"answer\":\"The study draws on 16 mid-career academics in education, social work, sociology, and geography across seven Ontario universities.\"},{\"question\":\"What key themes are identified in participants’ accounts?\",\"answer\":\"Analysis identifies three themes related to competing pressures: funding, challenges, and the “fast professor,” including constant effort to sustain a continuously successful research record.\"}]","Fast Professors, Research Funding, and the Figured Worlds of Mid-Career Ontario Academics - A journal of educational research and practice | PDF",1792080350]