A a narrative reflection on the past, present, and future of the Early Career Higher Education Researchers (ECHER) network. Given its independent, informal, loosely structured, and voluntary character, we conceptualise it as an open-ended experiment in community building. We discuss the advantages, disadvantages, and challenges which accompany the said experiment.
Falling in and out of love with academia: the story of my academic aspirations
What comes to your mind when you think about academia? Is it the excitement of working with knowledge and of contributing to the world? Or is it a job prospect filled with insecurities and competition? You may come up with different answers, depending on the country where you live in, your personal situation, and your academic aspiration. For me, the second scenario is on the top of my head.
“Western concepts don’t always apply everywhere”: Interview with Yaşar Kondakçı, Editor of “Higher Education Governance and Policy”
In this interview, we talk to Yaşar Kondakçı, Editor of the new journal Higher Education Governance and Policy. The journal has an international perspective towards higher education policies and management practices and aims to inform an international audience.
Early-career researchers pursuing an academic career in Ireland: mind the training gap
In many national contexts, Irish one included, if an early-career researcher wants to have an academic career, especially in teaching-focused programmes, pedagogical, technological and content expertise are usually required. However […]
Transferring research to practice: Exploring post-publication possibilities
After multiple rewrites, responding to reviewers’ comments and the final copyediting, you have reached the much anticipated finish-line, a published academic article. Feeling both relieved that this task is completed and proud of your accomplishment, you go about adding your article to your bibliography, perhaps sending it around to a few colleagues, and then…
What happens if you put academics from different disciplines in the same room and ask them to talk to each other?
Anyone who is trying to facilitate change in higher education settings knows that it’s a challenging thing to do. As the famous analogy goes, “changing a university is like moving a graveyard— you don’t get much help from the people inside”. […]
“There was no specific journal in the area…so we decided to start one”: Interview with Beverley Oliver, Editor of “Journal of Teaching and Learning for Graduate Employability”
This time in the “Meet the Editors” interview series, we talk to Emeritus Professor Beverley Oliver, Editor of the Journal of Teaching and Learning for Graduate Employability.
Why is higher education SO bad?
I often wonder how commonly held the myth of a certain kind of higher education is—of tweed-jacketed dons in lifelong jobs, with iron-plated pensions, spending lots of time with happy, engaged students, teaching with passion, with space for slow, thoughtful scholarship.
Why should we care about academic freedom? Meet Central European University, a higher education institution that relocated to another country
Earlier this month, the European Court of Justice decided that the Hungarian government breached the WTO and EU law on academia and the freedom to […]
What does it mean to be an early-career higher education researcher? And why we should all care
If you are reading these lines, there is a good chance you are thinking of yourself as a higher education researcher. You may have started your academic career as […]