Facilitated and chaired by: Professor Karen Mpamhanga who is the co-convenor of the Higher Education Policy. For more details about the network and its activities, please click here.

There has been a longstanding trend in many countries towards ever higher levels of casualised working conditions for those who teach in higher education. It is one thing, though, to be aware that discrepancies in working conditions between different members of staff promote inequities and constrain teaching quality, but some quite different for this to translate into revised policy and practice in the face of a global trend such as marketisation. The contributions to this seminar expand the boundaries around precarity in higher education teaching, opening out onto specific and realistic possibilities for shifts in policy and practice. It is important, for instance, to recognise the inter-locking challenges that need to be addressed when framing ways forward, taking into account issues that go beyond casualised working conditions. The extent to which collegiality and a vibrant approach to collective organising are present within any given context for teaching is also seen to influence the impact of precarious working conditions on teaching quality; as is the degree to which members of staff base ground their practice in their (even precarious) engagements with students. The presentations within this online seminar are based on contributions to a Special Issue of the journal Teaching in Higher Education that was published in Spring 2024.    

Schedule

Speaker bios

 Hilary Collins is a Senior Lecturer within the School of Business and Creative Industries at the University of the West of Scotland and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She has a PhD in Strategic Design Management from the University of Strathclyde, UK. Her research is based within Teaching and Learning examining how the digital arena is impacting the academic role in Higher Education with a particular emphasis on academic identity. She also researches in the field of creativity and creative facilitation and its value to strategy.

Jody Crutchley is a Lecturer in Modern History at Liverpool Hope University. Her research is based mostly in the history of empire, citizenship and education. She is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Treasurer of the History of Education Society, UK. For the past seven years, she has led a Community of Practice for Early Career Teachers at Liverpool Hope University and she was one of the co-editors of the Early Career Teachers in Higher Education book, which was published in 2021.

Hayley Glover is a Senior Lecturer and Assistant Head of Student Experience in the Open University Law School, Faculty of Business & Law, Open University. 'Post pandemic questions for putting teachers back at the heart of teaching in higher education’

Lauren Ila Misiaszek is Associate Professor at the Institute of International and Comparative Education, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, China. She is Immediate Past Secretary General of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies, a past Associate Director of the Paulo Freire Institute, UCLA, and Fellow and Founding Member of the International Network on Gender, Social Justice and Praxis. www.trabajocultural.com  

Fran Myers is a Lecturer in Management at the Department of People and Organisations (DPO), Faculty of Business and Law, Open University. Her research interests are in a) public and organisational storytelling and mythmaking, reputation management and presentation of public narratives via mediation and mediatisation, b) digital enclosure and associated identity work undertaken by those inhabiting digital workplaces and c) the political economy of teaching and learning in higher education policy development. She hold a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) and has advised a as a subject specialist for QAA quality reviews in business and management education. 

Zaki Nahaboo is Lecturer in Sociology at Birmingham City University and co-lead of the Cultural Theory cluster for the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. His research interests are in postcolonial IR, British imperial citizenship, and migration studies. He is co-author of Migrants, Borders and the European Question: the Calais Jungle (2021) and co-editor of the Early Career Teachers in Higher Education book (2021). Zaki is currently co-authoring the next edition of the Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice textbook for Sage Publications.

Namrata Rao’s research and writings are located in the area of learning and teaching in higher education that influence academic identity and practice. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, executive member of the British Association of International and Comparative Education (BAICE), member of the Research and Development working group of the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE) and Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE), an organisation for which she also co-convenes the Learning, Teaching and Assessment Network.  Her publications include books capturing the experiences of International Academics (2018) and Early Career Academics (2021) and three books on Leadership in Learning and Teaching (2022, 2023) published by Bloomsbury and Routledge. She is currently working on two further books entitled, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in Times of Crisis (due 2024) and Narratives of Academic Mothers’ Lived Experiences: Contradictions, Complexities and Challenges (due 2025).