Academics are expected to write for publication and meet publication targets in research assessment processes. These targets are set by national bodies and institutions, and they can be daunting for academics at the start of a research career. This article reports on an intervention designed to address this issue, writer's retreat, where academics…

Internationally, the attention being paid by governments to research education is growing in line with the increasing numbers of students undertaking research degrees. With this emphasis on research students it is, however, becoming clear that there is a specific category of research student that has been overlooked to the point that they are…

As part of their journey of learning to research, doctoral candidates need to become members of their research community. In part, this involves coming to be aware of their field in ways that are shared amongst longer-term members of the research community. One aspect of candidates' experience we need to understand, therefore, involves how they…

In Australia, as in the UK, much of the skills debate in research education has reflected a deficit model, whereby candidates are deemed to be in need of supplementary training. In response to the demands of employers and governments, most universities have added employability skills to postgraduate curricula, while simultaneously boosting their…

This article presents and discusses the results of a literature review that was conducted in order to understand ambivalences observed in reflections on the research-teaching nexus. As a result of this literature review, it is possible to attribute these ambivalences to the mixed use of two approaches: on the one hand, a functional approach that…

Caring about others is a virtuous act but is it compatible, or indeed advisable, in academic research? This article considers the locus of ethical responsibility for work-based practitioners, and considers ethics for researchers undertaking research within their own organisations. The authors argue that, as practitioner researchers, they are…

Examines how a disciplinary shift was brought about in an individual. The impetus for the shift was social and organizational, the process was undergone in a bureaucratic context, and the outcome was a scientific identity of a transdisciplinary nature, in which competencies in the social and life sciences were interwoven in daily practices. (EV)

Universities assume that the conceptions of research represented in their policies and plans are universally applicable. However, if individual postgraduate research students experience significant tension between their understandings about research and those of the institution, and this tension impedes on-time completion, then the institutions…

What it is like to be an academic working in a "new" university in the 2000s depends upon specific contexts and individual biographies. Even so, it is the case that change, contingent upon local and national policy initiatives, is endemic in the higher education sector and has had some impact upon most people working there. This article explores…

Using the Delphi survey method, identified the extent to which a panel of 11 experts in teaching and learning in higher education agree on the features and unresolved issues associated with the scholarship of teaching, and how these compare to perspectives discussed in relevant higher education literature. (EV)

Contract researchers constitute a marginal occupational group within the UK higher education system, and they manifest a high degree of turnover, in terms of leaving employment and returning to it. This article, which is based on qualitative interviews, examines some of the informal work which social science contract researchers engage in as they…

The information technology research community, comprising both academic and industry stakeholders, is responding to national and international imperatives that challenge disparate groups to work together. In this article it is shown how, within both academic and industrial contexts, researchers interpret, or constitute, the significance and value…

In recent years, a number of authors have applied Foucault's theory of governmentality to an analysis of the ways in which subjectivities are constituted in contemporary workplaces. The case has been well made that through the discursive practices of neo-liberal reform of organizations workers have been reconstituted as self-regulating,…

A discussion of common practices in and literature about faculty recruitment and selection concludes that (1) little has been written about the process or issues, (2) great reliance is put on personal judgment, and (3) each institution controls the selection process exclusively. (MSE)

Much institutional research is carried out at great cost but has little continued impact on institutions of higher education. Some of the barriers to the effective use of research and the experience of institutional research at the Open University of Great Britain are discussed. (JMD)