Being Scholarly


Book Description

In this discussion of higher education studies in South Africa we attempt to illustrate how higher education studies in South Africa reflect both global and local trends and concerns, and how the publications by Eli Bitzer over the course of his involvement and dedication to the field for thirty years have contributed to our understanding of this field.




How to Be a Happy Academic


Book Description

Want to be an effective, successful and happy academic? This book helps you hone your skills, showcase your strengths, and manage all the professional aspects of academic life. With their focus on life-long learning and positive reflection, Alex and Bailey encourage you to focus on your own behaviours and personal challenges and help you to find real world solutions to your problems or concerns. Weaving inspirational stories, the best of research and theory, along with pragmatic advice from successful academics, this book provides step-by-step guidance and simple tools to help you better meet the demands of modern academia, including: Optimising your effectiveness, priorities & strategy Workflow & managing workload Interpersonal relationships, and how to influence Developing your writing, presenting and teaching skills Getting your work/life balance right. Clear, practical and refreshingly positive this book inspires you to build the career you want in academia.




Being an Academic


Book Description

The role of academics in universities worldwide has undergone unprecedented change over the past decade. In this book Fanghanel discusses the effect on academics of modes of governance that have fostered the application of market principles to higher education and promoted flexibility and choice as levers for competition across the sector. She explores what it means to be an academic in the 21st century with reference to six ‘moments of practice’ through which she analyses the main facets of academic work and the responses of academics to this neoliberal drive. Being an Academic effectively examines the frameworks that govern academic work and academic lives, and the personal beliefs and ideals that academics bring with them as educators and researchers in higher education. It argues that there is a rich, critical, empowering potential within the academy that can be harnessed to counter the neoliberal stance and shape a meaningful contribution to modes of enquiry that deal with complexity and uncertainty in a global world. Drawing on empirical research collected from a global range of academics, this book examines how academics respond to structural challenges. It offers a re-appraisal of the main dynamics underpinning the professional and intellectual engagement of academics in today’s universities to feed a reflection on possible responses to the complex contemporary world with which the academic endeavour is engaged. The themes explored include academics’ positioning towards: Performativity and managerialism Regulation and professionalisation of practice The relation to learning and students The discipline Research Globalisation Each chapter includes vignettes illustrating the theme addressed, a discussion with reference to the context of policy and practice, published literature and illustrative reference to empirical data collected through interviews amongst academics in the UK, Europe, North America, South Africa and Australia. Providing a fresh look at the role of academics in a changing world, this book is essential reading for all those engaging in higher education research, lecturers new to higher education, and practising academics navigating through their complex role.




Being an Interdisciplinary Academic


Book Description

This book highlights the importance of interdisciplinarity in the academic landscape, and examines how it is understood in the context of the modern university. While interdisciplinarity is encouraged by research funders, academics themselves receive mixed messages about how, when and whether to follow this route. Building upon a series of career history interviews with established interdisciplinary researchers, the author reveals fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of interdisciplinary knowledge, how this is shared, and the skills these researchers bring. The book addresses these issues on both a personal and systemic level, identifying how a resilient researcher can craft their own research trajectory to view interdisciplinarity as a truly embedded approach.




Academic Well-Being of Racialized Students


Book Description

Canadian universities have an ongoing history of colonialism and racism in this white-settler society. Racialized students (Indigenous, Black and students of colour), who would once have been forbidden from academic spaces and who still feel out of place, must navigate these repressive structures in their educational journeys. Through the genres of essay, art, poetry and photography, this book examines the experiences of and effects on racialized students in the Canadian academy, while exposing academia’s lack of capacity to promote students’ academic well-being. The book emphasizes the crucial connections that racialized students forge, which transform an otherwise hostile environment into a space of intellectual collaboration, community building and transnational kinship relations. Meticulously curated by Dr. Benita Bunjun, this book is a living example of mentorship, reciprocity and resilience.




Health, Happiness, and Well-Being


Book Description

CHAPTER 14: MAKING MARRIAGE (AND OTHER RELATIONSHIPS) WORK -- CHAPTER 15: THE JOYS OF LOVING: ENHANCING SEXUAL EXPERIENCES -- CHAPTER 16: RAISING OUR KIDS WELL: GUIDELINES FOR POSITIVE PARENTING -- CHAPTER 17: FINANCIAL SKILLS -- AUTHOR INDEX -- SUBJECT INDEX




Being a Scholar in the Digital Era


Book Description

What opportunities, rather than disruptions, do digital technologies present? How do developments in digital media not only support scholarship and teaching but also further social justice? Written by two experts in the field, this accessible book offers practical guidance, examples, and reflection on this changing foundation of scholarly practice. It is the first to consider how new technologies can connect academics, journalists, and activists in ways that foster transformation on issues of social justice. Discussing digital innovations in higher education as well as what these changes mean in an age of austerity, this book provides both a vision of what scholars can be in the digital era and a road map to how they can enliven the public good.




Authoring a PhD


Book Description

This engaging and highly regarded book takes readers through the key stages of their PhD research journey, from the initial ideas through to successful completion and publication. It gives helpful guidance on forming research questions, organising ideas, pulling together a final draft, handling the viva and getting published. Each chapter contains a wealth of practical suggestions and tips for readers to try out and adapt to their own research needs and disciplinary style. This text will be essential reading for PhD students and their supervisors in humanities, arts, social sciences, business, law, health and related disciplines.




Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks


Book Description

This book provides you with all the tools you need to write an excellent academic article and get it published.




Just Being Difficult?


Book Description

Is academic writing, particularly in the disciplines of literary theory and cultural studies, needlessly obscure? The claim has been widely circulated in the media and subject to passionate debate, but it has not been the subject of serious discussion. Just Being Difficult? provides learned and thoughtful analyses of the claim, of those it targets, and of the entire question of how critical writing relates to its intended publics and to audiences beyond them. In this book, a range of distinguished scholars, including some who have been charged with willful obscurity, argue for the interest and importance of some of the procedures that critics have preferred to charge with obscurity rather than confront in another way. The debate on difficult writing hovers on the edges of all academic writing that seeks to play a role in the public arena. This collection is a much-needed contribution to the discussion.