The architecture of the in-between: conceptualising the third space through epistemic living spaces

The work of third space practitioners, especially academic literacy practitioners (ALPs), has received little research attention in South African higher education. In this paper, I apply Felt and Fochler’s (2012) ‘epistemic living spaces’ (ELS) to explore ALP agency and professional identity. ELS provides ‘cultural categories’ to explore how researchers (ALPs) feel ‘at home’ in their space, how they understand their ways of being, and how they know what values matter [Felt, U., Ed. 2009. Knowing and Living in Academic Research, Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague]. I map out how ALPs occupy their ELS (their temporal, epistemic, spatial, symbolic, and social spaces) with data from my doctoral research. The participants were ALPs from 9 public higher education institutions in South Africa. Data were generated from questionnaires (n = 96) and semi-structured interviews (n = 15). I present a new way of conceptualising an ALP's centre of praxis [Hadley, G. 2015. English for Academic Purposes in Neoliberal Universities: A Critical Grounded Theory. Switzerland: Springer] and explore how working in the third space affects their agency and identity. I also challenge common-sense discourses about ALPs, which may assist higher education managers in making strategic decisions about academic literacies work.