Abstract: This talk will focus on one chapter from the upcoming book Made to Work. Mobilising Contemporary Worklives (Gray, Ciolfi & De Carvalho, 2020), which analyses the conditions of mobile knowledge work (MKW) in contemporary worklives, contrasting and drawing parallels among three highly significant sectors of the Knowledge Economy: academia, Information Communication Technology (ICT) management, and digital creative work. In the talk, I will detail the imperative to become and remain productive as a constant quest in the lives of mobile knowledge workers. These workers’ accounts highlight three key features of this quest: capturing the elusive knowledge product; crafting and monitoring productivity narratives; and working on the self to become and remain a productive subject. I will argue how the productivity quest is a strand of what we term ‘corollary work’: the elusive (and often invisible) work underpinning the configuration of workers, informational, technological, relational and infrastructural resources in (re)producing liveable worklives. While the achievement of productivity and product creation are central to mobile knowledge work, it is the all-encompassing effects of ‘the productivity imperative’ that generates the corollary work of narrating productivity.
Bio: Luigina Ciolfi is Professor of Human Centred Computing at Sheffield Hallam University (UK). She holds a Laurea degree (summa cum laude) in Communication Sciences from the University of Siena (Italy), and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Limerick (Ireland). An experienced scholar in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), she researches the understanding, practicing and designing of digital interactive systems from a socio-technical perspective. She has worked on national and international research projects in the cultural heritage and mobile work domains and has served in numerous service and advisory roles for scientific committees, funding agencies and public bodies. Professor Ciolfi has authored over 100 refereed publications in journals such as Human Computer Interaction, Mobilities, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, CoDesign, CSCW Journal, and prestigious conferences such as ECSCW, ACM CSCW, Designing Interactive Systems, and CHI. She is co-author (with Eva Hornecker) of Human-Computer Interactions in Museums. She is a Member of EUSSET - The European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies, Senior Member of the ACM, and a Steering Committee Member for ACM CSCW. Full info on her work can be found at https://luiginaciolfi.net/
