This book
draws on interdisciplinary social science and philosophical frameworks to
offer new dimensions to debate about intellectual leadership and higher
education. The
chapters are focused on provoking readers to think critically about
intellectual leadership in precarious times. The contributors frame critical
questions about the unevenness, ambivalences, and disruptions that now mark
everyday life and interactions. Rather than thinking about ‘freedom from
precarious times and precarity’ they consider ‘freedom from within’ and how
the sovereignty and autonomy of the individual to think and speak within the
public realm might be retained, if not reclaimed. In the precarious present
and in times of precarity, what has changed and why? What might now be the
new social reality within which we work?
Each
of the contributors have been invited to take up their own perspective on
what is precarious, and to examine the impacts on intellectual leadership.
What does it mean to do intellectual work and be an intellectual leader? What
are the implications for intellectual work and leadership if the academy
itself is in precarious times?
1. Intellectual Leadership, Higher Education, and Precarious Times, Tanya Fitzgerald (University of Western Australia, Australia), Helen M Gunter (University of Manchester, UK) and Jon Nixon (Middlesex University, UK) 2. When Intellectual Leadership Dies: Critical Voice vs. Self-Censorship in Precarious Universities, Anatoly Oleksiyenko (Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong) 3. Governance of the Marketized University in Precarious Times, Steven Jones (University of Manchester, UK) 4. The Geopolitics of International Higher Education, Transnational Intellectual Collaboration and Leadership, Ly Thi Tran, Jill Blackmore, and Diep Thi Bich Nguyen (Deakin University, Australia) 5. On the Abolition of Intellectual Leadership, Richard Hall (De Montfort University, UK) 6. Glass Cliff and Other Factors Facilitating Women’s Leadership in Irish Higher Education, Pat O’Connor (University College Dublin, Ireland) 7. Thinking Plurality: Academic Leadership, Precarious Institutions and Collegial Bodies as Member States in an Epistemic Union, Sharon Rider (Uppsala University, Sweden) 8. Enabling Intellectual Leadership in Precarious Times: The Contribution of the Professional Doctorate, Elizabeth Parr (Liverpool Hope University, UK), Janet Lord (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK), Stephen M Rayner (University of Manchester, UK) and Rachel Stenhouse (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK) 9. Crises and the Emergence of ‘Estates’ within Australian Universities, James Waghorne (University of Melbourne, Australia) 10. The Need for Critical Intellectual Leadership in US Community Colleges during Precarious Times, David L. Levinson (Connecticut State Community College, USA) and Kathleen R. Rowell (Sinclair Community College in Dayton, USA) 11. Thinking Critically about Intellectual Leadership in Precarious Times, Tanya Fitzgerald (University of Western Australia, Australia), Helen M Gunter (University of Manchester, UK) and Jon Nixon (Middlesex University, UK) Index
Tanya Fitzgerald is Professor of Higher Education and Dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Western Australia, Australia. Helen M. Gunter is Professor of Educational Policy at the University of Manchester, UK, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Jon Nixon was Honorary Professor in the Center for Lifelong Learning Research and Development at the Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, and Visiting Professor at Middlesex University, UK.
Reviews for Intellectual Leadership, Higher Education and Precarious Times
The book embraces with rigour and relish the task of critiquing the dominant political discourse surrounding universities and wider society. It urges leaders throughout the higher education ecosystem to examine their practices and to redress the iniquities of precarity in higher education. -- Paul Gentle, Academic Director, Invisible Grail, UK A refreshing new approach to intellectual leadership in higher education. Drawing on global examples, the authors grapple with the precarious contexts within which faculty, students, staff and administrators co-exist today. Readers are challenged to resist the notion that universities are in decline and to actively participate in reclaiming their purpose to produce knowledge for the common good. -- Margaret Grogan, Professor Emerita of Educational Leadership and Policy, Chapman University, USA This broad-ranging and thought-provoking book provides much food for thought that is empirical, theoretical and practical. Its strength is that it offers tools to think with rather than solutions. -- Rebecca Boden, Research Director of New Social Research, University of Tampere, Finland A hopeful path forward for intellectual leadership as a crucial element of a better and more socially just future. -- Mary Churchill, Associate Dean and Professor of the Practice, Boston University, USA