SRHE webinar has been convened to mark the launch of a unique Special Issue of Studies in Higher Education which features international research collaborations on the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic. We encourage you to read the articles ahead of the event. All the articles are free to view and download at:

Studies in Higher Education: Vol 46, No 1 (tandfonline.com)

This SRHE webinar brings together many of the authors who contributed articles to the Special Issue, to introduce their work, share reflections on the themes and challenges which have emerged and engage in discussion on the longer term impact of the pandemic in the context of higher education.

In February 2020 the Editorial Team at Studies in Higher Education decided it might be a good thing to have a documented Special Issue on how individuals were dealing with the COVID 19 pandemic.

A range of colleagues across all continents, from positions ranging from graduate researchers to senior executives, were asked to keep a six month diary on the impact of the pandemic on their professional and personal lives. This has resulted in a unique record of one of the most disruptive periods in our lives. It also has produced a very more personalized series of contributions – a style that isn’t often found in an academic journal.

There are a number of things that jump out at you when you go through the various contributions. The first is the complete level of unpreparedness for this event at the national level. The second is the different ways in which our institutions have responded. We have examples of very structured policies and actions to train our staff in dealing with online learning and assuring that ‘no student is left behind’ to the opposite of essentially leaving it to staff to figure it out for themselves. The third, and one of the most striking, is the overarching sectoral response.

The above themes feature prominently in the articles included in this webinar, as do the wider professional and personal consequences, as many contributors have experienced the most restrictive lockdowns globally. The challenges of leadership in times of crises in both public and private institutions are also explored to a level that we believe has not been done before.

Collectively these presentations will examine what has emerged about how the HE sector globally has fared and the role it is playing in moving us towards the post-pandemic university.

This webinar is supported by a series of blog posts from contributors to the Special issue which will be published on the www.srheblog.com before and after the webinar.

08.55 – 09.00
Welcome and introductions: Helen Perkins, Director SRHE, Society for Research into Higher Education

09.00 ‐ 09.50
Facilitator: Leo Goedegebuure, University of Melbourne, Australia    

Leo Goedegebuure, University of Melbourne, Australia
Crisis‐ What crisis?                                                                        
            
Warren Bebbington, University of Melbourne, Australia
Leadership strategies for a higher education sector in flux

Pham Ai Tam Le, University of Melbourne, Australia
Support for Doctoral Students during the pandemic: the case of the University of Melbourne

09.50 – 10.30
Facilitator: Wen Wen, Tsinghua University, China

Jisun Jung, University of Hong Kong
Living in Uncertainty: The COVID‐19 Pandemic and Higher Education in Hong Kong

Hamish Coates, Tsinghua University, China
Engaging transformed fundamentals to design global hybrid higher education

10.30 – 10.40 BREAK

10.40 – 11.20
Facilitator: Nico Cloete, CREST Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Teboho Moja, New York University, USA
National and institutional responses – Reimagined Operations – Pandemic Disruptions and Academic Continuity for a Global University

Wondwosen Tamrat, Saint Mary’s University, Ethiopia
Enduring the impacts of COVID 19: Experiences of the Private Higher Education sector in Ethiopia

11.20 ‐ 12.10
Facilitator: Maria Slowey, Dublin City University, Ireland

Mara Soncin, Polytechnic of Milan, Italy
Higher Education in Troubled Times: On the Impact of Covid‐9  in Italy

Simone Eringfield, University of Cambridge, UK
Higher education and its post‐coronial future: Utopian hopes and
dystopian fears at Cambridge University during Covid‐19

Alicia Betts, University of Girona, Spain
A lockdown journal from Catalonia

12:10 ‐ 12.30
Open discussion. Facilitator: Rob Cuthbert, Editor SRHE News