This well-attended seminar featured excellent papers from Professor Rosemary Deem (Royal Holloway College, University of London) and Dr Rajani Naidoo (University of Bath). Rosemary’s paper, Universities under New Labour - senior leaders’ responses to government reforms and policy levers - findings from an ESRC project on public service leadership, highlighted differing conceptions of university leadership and management and the relationship between government and higher education institutions. Rajani’s paper, Mismanaging Education?  Universities, State Bureaucracy and the Quasi Market, also addressed issues of university governance, focusing particularly on the changing articulation of state bureaucracy and the quasi-market. The papers provoked a lively discussion.