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Rationale

This seminar series aims to develop new conceptual frameworks for examining continuity and change in higher education that go beyond the traditional critical structures of globalisation, innovation, new managerialism and digitisation.

The dialogues generated within this series are focussed by topics committed to thinking about the moral, cultural, social and educational significance of the Academy. We aim to contribute to new debates about the function and fitness for purpose of higher education, sensitive to respecting the complex conditions of social difference and diversity. So often the dominant problematic of higher education fixes upon the social, economic and cultural features and forces associated with neo-liberal economic orders. Hence, the central framing of transformation is set by the abstract disembodied discourse of globalisation. Alternatively, dialogues from within the Academy about rethinking its own vision revert back to a type of golden ageism rather than forward to imagine a confident and cross-disciplinary form of future purpose.

This seminar series is orientated to take a more positive tone inspired by the optimism of reinvention and reimagining. It interrogates aspects of HE such as assessment, design, student and staff composition and culture, and by providing critical commentaries on them, works to represent the multiple significance of the Academy beyond the economic, most notably as an important location for the production of discourses and practices of distributive social justice.

Programme

This series described on the left hand side of this web page is framed by the question of how to think, enact and design equity into 'The University of the Future'. Please click on any of the seminar links on the left hand side for more information.