Changing Identities in Higher Education

Professor Ronald Barnett is Pro-Director for Longer Term Strategy and Professor of Higher Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. Roberto Di Napoli is Senior Lecturer in Educational Development at Imperial College London. He has extensive teaching experience in higher education, both in the UK and other parts of Europe.

This is a timely book of exploration that seeks illumination from experiences as well as theories. It moves forward studies of academic identities in a number of critically important ways. Taking as its point of departure the supercomplexity confronting and pervading contemporary higher education, it locates studies of identities firmly in the diversity of actors that shape and are shaped by it. A central feature is the exploration of voice in the "historical process of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction" that epitomises identity development for the editors. It succeeds in incorporating not only a variety of voices but also a dialogue between them characterised by an openness to the other as well as by individual integrity. Crucially, too, it gives due place to knowledge identities in giving first voice to a discipline-rooted critical exploration of the potential for interdisciplinarity to contribute alongside the disciplines in the construction of identities in higher education. Mary Henkel, Professor Associate, Brunel University, UKI was captivated by this book's vibrant expression of fragmented identities. It's wide variety of voices speak of the complexity of higher education with authenticity and candour and without easy simplifications. A good read that left me much to ponder over.Stephen Rowland, Professor of Higher Education, University College London, UK

• Introduction. Higher Education: Why Identities and Voices? Preamble: Knowledge Identities Part 1: Identities and Voices in Higher Education 1. Being an Academic Today 2. Have Students got a Voice? 3. Identities of Academic Developers: Critical Friends in the Academy? 4. The Changing Voices and Identities of Professional Administrators and Managers 5. Managers: Academics and/or Business People? Part 2: Perspectives 6. The Managers’ Perspectives 7. The Academics’ Perspectives 8. The Staff Developers’ Perspectives 9. The Students’ Perspectives. Conclusions. Changing voices and Identities in Higher Education?