In the UK, all doctoral programmes are expected to include some form of periodic progression assessment, with individual institutions having autonomy to design and implement their own structures. Yet, despite the potential significance of this assessment to individual doctoral journeys, the design of progression assessment processes has previously…

UK universities have, historically, been strong in the Humanities as well as other disciplinary areas. So the country is well-placed to benefit from the global shift towards interdisciplinary ways of working. This report looks at the current health of Humanities throughout the UK, in both teaching and research, and uncovers numerous examples of…

Publish or Perish has a variety of meanings. Most often, the term is understood as a reference to the material requirements of publishing relentlessly in order to make or advance a career in contemporary academia. In this article, I show that Publish or Perish is also a cultural narrative that appears to provide a formal rationalistic solution to…

From a Nordic and British perspective, the history of education is a vibrant field of knowledge production. It invites scholars from the humanities and social sciences to investigate the continuities and changes in education over time, as well as "Bildung," nurturing, learning, and teaching. By underlining the breadth of the history of…

Departments of Arts and Humanities globally face increasing financial threat from falling enrolment, rising costs, and 'strategic realignment' at university level. In the UK, in particular, cuts to the Arts and Humanities sector are becoming endemic, with complex ramifications for prospective students as well as academic and professional staff. In…

In recent years, there has been a swing to science and away from the arts and humanities in the subjects students study at school and university. Why? A careful look at the data suggests policy and even schools may not be quite as influential on these choices as we think.

The COVID-19 crisis has put the question of the political uses of science back at the centre of public debates. In the last few years, the focus on using scientific knowledge in parliamentary technology assessment (PTA) institutions has predominantly been to the advantage of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In contrast, our…

Background: "Psychological literacy" is a set of attributes, which refer broadly to how students apply their subject-specific psychology knowledge to solving problems. However, the extent to which psychological literacy skills are "unique" to psychology as a discipline is unknown. Objective: We assessed whether students…

The digital humanities (DH) remain a growing area of interest among researchers and a locus of new positions within libraries, especially academic libraries, as well as archives, museums, and cultural heritage organizations. In response to this demand, many programs that train information professionals have developed specific curricula around DH.…

There have recently been a series of prominent projects in the UK that aim to bring philosophy into the heart of prison education. The aim of this paper is to consider a possible rationale for this pedagogical development. A distinction is drawn between a content and a sensibility approach to teaching philosophy, where the latter is primarily…

Contributing to the debate on decolonising the curriculum, this reflective article questions: What does a safe space in a decolonised classroom mean? For whom is it safe? And at what cost? Must we redraw the parameters of 'safe'? Prompted by a real-life 'n-word incident' in the classroom, this article unpacks the collision of decolonising the…

Increasingly across many UK higher education institutions staff and students are questioning and challenging systemic inequalities that affect racially minoritised groups in their learning and sense of belonging within the curriculum. Students are calling for inclusion of diverse sources of knowledge and perspectives, especially from scholars of…

As higher education increasingly aligns with the ideology of the marketplace, we argue that conditions of corporate competition have contributed to the invisibilization of collective work in UK higher education. Drawing on the work of Wa Thiong'o, N. (1986. "Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature." Nairobi,…

The transition from Key Stage 4 (KS4) to post-16 education marks a shift from a broad programme of study (around 8-10 subjects) to a narrower programme (usually 1-4 subjects). Within the constraints of course availability and entry criteria, students must make important choices. Students' post-16 pathways matter because different subjects as well…

The need for universities to effectively support students identifying as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Colour (BIPoC) remains a pressing element of strategies to close awarding gaps. Within overall support packages, the contribution of Learning Developers merits investigation, since these staff are often responsible for nurturing growth in…