Demands on academic leadership are increasing, which raises the need for leadership training. This article describes development and implementation of a group training intervention in academic leadership at a departmental level. Little systematic research has addressed the question of what forms of leadership training are associated with…

International policy changes that have prioritised increasing growth in the numbers of doctoral students have led to wide-ranging debate about the changing purpose of the doctorate. However, there has been little research aimed at investigating doctoral supervisors' views of the purpose of the doctorate, despite the significant role supervisors…

This paper draws on British Council commissioned research in response to concerns about women's absence from senior leadership positions in higher education in South Asia. The study sought existing knowledge from literature, policies, and available statistics and collected original interview data from 30 academics in Afghanistan, Bangladesh,…

Are Asian universities different from those in Western countries? Premised on the hypothesis that Asian universities are different because of hybridization between Western academic models and local traditional cultures, this paper investigates the hybrid characteristics in Malaysian universities resulting from interaction between contemporary…

Among the many external forces that have impacted upon institutions, league tables have been the dynamic to which universities across the world are now responding. Following the appointment of a new vice-chancellor at one post-92 UK university, a modernisation project was introduced aimed at maximising the institutions' research standing. For the…

Unprecedented expansion of the public higher education sector in Ethiopia has brought about masses of early career academics (ECAs) to take up teaching and research in the sector. In recognition of a multitude of responsibilities and challenges these ECAs would face, a higher diploma program (HDP) was introduced in 2004 both for ECAs and senior…

Threshold concepts were used to underpin a major curriculum reform endeavour in occupational therapy. After rigorous interrogation of troublesome knowledge and ensuring that the emergent concepts conformed to the five characteristics of previously proposed threshold concepts, we identified five threshold concepts. Two years into the rollout of the…

In a radical change to modes of academic employment in Finland, a newly merged university is introducing a tenure track system based on examples from the United States. Analyzing texts produced by university strategists, on the one hand, and interviews with staff affected by the system, on the other, we explore how notions of academic freedom are…