Whitewashed Time: How Academic Calendars and Funding Duration Affect Meaningful Cultural Work and Exchange

Academic calendars are based around annual segments of time. Scientific and academic grants are similarly limited to short timespans and deadlines. However, for work that involves multiple parties with different customs and practices surrounding time, these limits can be extremely restrictive. This paper examines how academic and grant timelines affect the amount of collaborative work or exchange a project will complete, as well as the depth and quality of associated interagency relationships and future partnerships. Examples of recent applied work and its challenges will be used to define and highlight more common struggles that researchers may experience on individual and institutional levels.