Paul Gibbs – författare

Higher education and the institution of the university exist in time, their essential nature now continually subject to change: change in students, in knowledge, in structure and in their own communities and those they service. These changes are accompanied by a quickening of time, leading to a heightened intensity of academic life. Yet the nature of time in all the contemporary work on the university has been largely overlooked. This is an important omission and Universities in the Flux of Time has gathered leading academics whose contributions to the volume raise a debate as to the influence and use of time in the university. They do this in an exploration of how these changes are perceived in higher education and how these affect its temporality from local, national and global perspectives. By dealing with the time within the university, the book opens new spaces for the development of the university and civic society.

The book develops an interdisciplinary understanding of the temporal issues of engaging with the past, present and future of higher education and its institutions, through consideration of the increased speed demanded for the production of able students and innovative research, to the accountability pressures from central governments and commerce. Reflecting on these issues in the higher education sector, Universities in the Flux of Time is split into three parts, with each one addressing time and its multiple relationships with the university:

This volume will provide essential reading for those on higher education studies courses as well as a wider audience of managers, practitioners, policy makers, academics and students and from many disciplinary perspectives including sociology, organisation studies, social psychology and the philosophy of education.

Higher education and the institution of the university exist in time, their essential nature now continually subject to change: change in students, in knowledge, in structure and in their own communities and those they service. These changes are accompanied by a quickening of time, leading to a heightened intensity of academic life. Yet the nature of time in all the contemporary work on the university has been largely overlooked. This is an important omission and Universities in the Flux of Time has gathered leading academics whose contributions to the volume raise a debate as to the influence and use of time in the university. They do this in an exploration of how these changes are perceived in higher education and how these affect its temporality from local, national and global perspectives. By dealing with the time within the university, the book opens new spaces for the development of the university and civic society.

The book develops an interdisciplinary understanding of the temporal issues of engaging with the past, present and future of higher education and its institutions, through consideration of the increased speed demanded for the production of able students and innovative research, to the accountability pressures from central governments and commerce. Reflecting on these issues in the higher education sector, Universities in the Flux of Time is split into three parts, with each one addressing time and its multiple relationships with the university:

This volume will provide essential reading for those on higher education studies courses as well as a wider audience of managers, practitioners, policy makers, academics and students and from many disciplinary perspectives including sociology, organisation studies, social psychology and the philosophy of education.

The authors explore the implications of these research contexts, and discuss approaches and methodologies that work based researchers might adopt, with a particular focus on ethics - one of the key concerns for those undertaking a research project of this type.

This book is an authoritative and readable guide to the theory and practice of work based research. It is for anyone undertaking a research project based on work practice, including learners on postgraduate, undergraduate and doctoral programmes. Practitioners, managers and participants in work based courses or modules in education, healthcare and business management, will find it particularly useful.

The authors explore the implications of these research contexts, and discuss approaches and methodologies that work based researchers might adopt, with a particular focus on ethics - one of the key concerns for those undertaking a research project of this type.

This book is an authoritative and readable guide to the theory and practice of work based research. It is for anyone undertaking a research project based on work practice, including learners on postgraduate, undergraduate and doctoral programmes. Practitioners, managers and participants in work based courses or modules in education, healthcare and business management, will find it particularly useful.

This deliberately wide-ranging book addresses issues related to trust, compassion, well-being, grace, dignity and integrity.  It explores these within the context of higher education, giving existential and empirical accounts of how these moral duties can be expressed within the academy and why they ought to be. The chapters range from values used in the marketing and management of institutions to their realisation in therapeutic and teacher training spaces. The book opens with a specific introduction which positions the work and outlines the context of duties and obligations at play. This is followed by two distinct but related sections including chapters on theoretical issues, organisational practices and personal praxis. The first part is more abstract and theoretical, the second locates the values discussed within the practices of the university. In doing so the book encompasses a wide range of issues from multi-disciplinary and geo-political regions. The authors are a mixture of world-leading authorities on values in higher education and earlier career researchers, who are nonetheless equally passionate contributors. This mix gives the book vibrancy and offers insight which appeals to both an academic and managerial readership.

In addition, the book demonstrates how the idea of narratives can be used as an approach to achieving EDI goals, presenting powerful stories on EDI implementation and challenges stemming from EDI-related abuses. Taken together, the book’s respective chapters depict the complexity of EDI in a nuanced way, reflecting the disparate realities of those involved in its implementation. The combination of academic research and insights from practitioners in the field give the book a unique position in the global management literature on EDI, while also yielding a wealth of valuable lessons and conclusions.

How can we understand what a transdisciplinary (TD) approach might actually comprise of, given its complex and various uses? This book asks the question of leading practitioners in the field of higher education and transdisciplinarity.

The emergence of transdisciplinarity has been a response to the often-failed closed-system, discipline-based approaches to solving complex social problems (various reports and definitions may be found in projects reported by the OECD, UNESCO and EU). These failures are often contingent upon disaggregated notions of epistemology and the compounding failures of ontological incongruities that are evident in these discipline-based approaches. Such approaches are not necessarily confined to large, seemingly insurmountable social problems, but apply equally well to issues in educational institutions as workplaces. Transdisciplinary knowledge is in the liberation of new and imaginative understanding of the structured reality of open social systems. It gives rise to generative mechanisms, which are central to relationships of agency and structure.

This book explicitly unites the concepts of higher education and love to examine how these concepts are mutually compatible. As the world of higher education moves towards the metrics of value, and the worth of knowledge becomes more valued in its use rather than its discovery, a crisis brews. If higher education is to contribute to the wellbeing of the self and of others, then the institution needs to be radically reviewed to see if, and how, love contributes to higher education within and beyond its walls. This book addresses the core question of what would the university might be like, today and into the future, if the timeless notion of love was the basis of its educative process, notwithstanding the material artefacts the university helps to create, but also as a way of framing approaches to higher education.