The rise of third space professionals: Paradoxes and dilemmas

Abstract

An increasing number of staff in higher education with both academic and professional credentials find themselves working on broadly based projects in what Whitchurch has described as Third Space environments (Whitchurch, High Educ Q 62(4), 377-396, 2008). Such environments do not sit easily in formal organisational structures and can be both ambiguous and uncertain. Those who work in them are likely to encounter a series of paradoxes and dilemmas, described in this chapter, and to develop their identities in relation to these. They are thereby extending ideas about what it might mean to be an academic or a professional in contemporary higher education.