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 […]
Author: Jelena Brankovic
“It is our duty as editors and reviewers to help advance higher education scholarship”: Interview with Manja Klemenčič, Editor of “European Journal of Higher Education”

This year, the European Journal of Higher Education celebrates its 10-year anniversary. Although a relatively young scholarly outlet, the journal occupies an important space, not only in European […]
“We need more discussion on contributions to our field”: Interview with Jeroen Huisman, Editor of “Higher Education Policy”

In this interview, we are talking with Jeroen Huisman, the editor of Higher Education Policy. Jeroen is Professor of Higher Education at the Department of Sociology, Ghent University and the director of its Centre for Higher Education Governance Ghent (CHEGG). […]
“Changing a university is like moving a graveyard”: a history of an analogy

If you are not entirely new to higher education research, policy, or practice, chances are you have come across the quote from the title, possibly more than once. But where does it come from?
Research on higher education research: a bibliography

What is higher education research? Is it a (scattered) field, a discipline, a tribe, a territory, a (a‐theoretical) community of practice, a cluster of silos, or an archipelago whose watery divides need bridging? […]
Article-based PhD thesis or a monograph?

Even before we start our PhD journey, many of us are presented with the dilemma: should I hand in a so-called cumulative dissertation, made of articles (or article manuscripts), or should I go for the good old book or monograph? […]
ECHER Blog turns One!

Today is exactly one year since we launched this lovely blog we are so very proud of! Which makes it a good the occasion to look back at the things which we have done over this year – both related to the blog and to the community. […]
Helping each other write better: ECHER’s first Academic Writing Clinic

A wise scholar once told me that the difference between being able to recognize a good piece of writing and producing one ourselves is akin to something like watching the Olympics and participating in them. Fitting or not, I always found this metaphor […]
ECHER: Past, present, and future

“Early-career” is, from whichever angle you look at it, a transitory phase in one’s academic life. It’s not even a phase we are very keen on staying in for more than we have to. After all, don’t we all work very hard to be considered early-career as short as possible?
Academic work, digital infrastructures, and the rise of the “bibliometric self”

The use of data instruments in performance measurement is all the rage. It seems that the continuous improvement in technology and its increasing availability has fundamentally transformed the way we think of performance-based governance mechanisms. […]