Fast food research does not exist amongst a plurality of approaches and ideas about research in higher education. Fast food research is how things get done – it has a hegemonic status. There is a possible alternative to fast food research, and the vast standardised production of disposable, here today and gone tomorrow, scholarship. And two English literature scholars – Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber – have come up with such an alternative in their manifesto-like diatribe against the corporatized university: The Slow Professor. Drawing inspiration from the politics of the slow food movement, Berg and Seeber make a compelling scholarly and political case for the value of slow scholarship against the corrosive psychological effects of speedy scholarship. But what about the intellectual benefits of being a slow professor? The real intellectual differences between the slow professor and the fast food professor are somewhat elusive, although we are reassured by Berg and Seeber that ‘good work takes time’. The authors do not explain what they mean by ‘good work’. Producing slow research cannot necessarily be equated with, or lead to, better scholarship. And probably for this reason, Berg and Seeber’s claims about the intellectual and scholastic benefits of slow research are more imagined than real. The challenge of going against the conventional grain of fast food research needs a concrete idea as to what is meant by good research and whether slow research will lead us there. In a sense, we need a complete re-imagining of academic research time – one that involves more than simply relying on slowing down the scholastic clock. Enter the sustainable scholar.