Angela Brew – författare

This book is concerned with how individual researchers experience and respond to this scenario. It brings together research and scholarship examining the socio-political context of university research and explores how researchers'' perceptions and identities are changed by political and cultural agendas for research.

The book brings together the work of leading international scholars from different countries who have investigated theoretically and empirically the nature of research, research cultures and academic researcher identities. It brings together work that has hitherto only been reported in isolated and esoteric contexts internationally, thus consolidating the nature of research as an important field of study in its own right and providing important new understandings of how research is experienced in universities. A range of different theoretical positions taken by different authors is indicative of a lively and robust field of developing knowledge.

Contributors:Dr Gerlese S. Akerlind, Dr Christine Asmar, Professor David Boud, Dr Harry de Boer, Dr Jurgen Enders, Dr Margaret Kiley, Dr Liudvika Leisyte, Professor Alison Lee, Dr Catherine Manathunga, Professor Emeritus Ian McNay, Dr Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Dr Mari Murtonen, Associate Professor Susan Page, Professor Betty Rambur, Professor Sir Peter Scott, Professor Margaret Thornton, Professor Malcolm Tight

Increasingly, new academics are entering higher education without conventional research training and without a clear idea of what research actually involves. This is particularly true of academics who enter from having spent time in a profession including many in the newer disciplines. In addition, institutions of higher education which do not have a tradition of research are increasingly competing for research funding.The Nature of Research looks at this background and discusses what is wrong with academic research and discusses what is wrong with academic research today, what needs to change for it to survive, how to allow new kinds of research to flourish, directions for future action and how academic research can teach us to live in today''s complex and uncertain society.The aim of the book, then, is to provide a stimulus to thinking about the nature and role of research with a view to considering what might be appropriate in the next century. Since research is so central to university life, looking at research will tell us much about what the university of the future might be like.

Increasingly, new academics are entering higher education without conventional research training and without a clear idea of what research actually involves. This is particularly true of academics who enter from having spent time in a profession including many in the newer disciplines. In addition, institutions of higher education which do not have a tradition of research are increasingly competing for research funding.The Nature of Research looks at this background and discusses what is wrong with academic research and discusses what is wrong with academic research today, what needs to change for it to survive, how to allow new kinds of research to flourish, directions for future action and how academic research can teach us to live in today''s complex and uncertain society.The aim of the book, then, is to provide a stimulus to thinking about the nature and role of research with a view to considering what might be appropriate in the next century. Since research is so central to university life, looking at research will tell us much about what the university of the future might be like.