Teaching academics operate in a turbulent context of natureculture challenges, as well as neoliberal institutional constraints. Therefore, understanding the experiences and observations of those teaching sustainability deserves ongoing attention. In an exploratory study, we conducted in-depth interviews at one Australian university with six academics who incorporate sustainability concepts into their teaching. In a move away from Cartesian separability we brought a relational and connected process philosophy to a qualitative interview methodology, enlivening interviews as performative “intra-views.” Applying a posthumanist sensibility to qualitative method opened the possibility of richer accounts of teaching experience. What emerged from the interviews was a sense of academics’ optimism, commitment and enthusiasm for teaching, along with their success strategies such as transdisciplinary pedagogies and cross-sectorial partnerships. This research points to the importance of ongoing attention to the lived experience of academics teaching sustainability, and to the value of bringing theory to meet data in sustainability education research.

Based on the past year’s traffic stats to the Humanities Indicators web site, the submitted article takes a question-based approach to answer what Americans seem most interested in learning about the humanities. Using infographics and short summary paragraphs, the report walks through key data points about the current state of the humanities using the most recent available data from the federal government or surveys conducted by the project.

Drawing on a project conducted between 2017 and 2020 for the UK Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), this article discusses the place of third space professionals within a changing professional workforce in UK higher education. At the same time as routine administrative roles in registry environments have, by and large, been superseded by online registration and data management facilities, new roles have emerged in a ‘third space’ between academic and professional spheres of activity. These have created issues of visibility, place, recognition and reward for those occupying them. Examples are given of a misalignment between such individuals and the organizational structures within which they work, affecting, for example, job descriptions, titles and promotion and progression criteria. The article goes on to reflect on the perceptions of senior institutional managers who are responsible for maintaining institutional structures, as well as of those in third space roles, and suggestions are made as to ways in which adjustments might be made for the future.

Postsecondary education is at the forefront of preparing the next generation of cultural resource management (CRM) practitioners for the workforce. We conducted a study from 2022 to 2023 to gain perspective on improving postsecondary CRM curricula in order to better prepare students for careers in CRM. Our research included semi-structured interviews of nine key consultants with careers in CRM, along with a survey of the broader CRM professional community in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Results from the research identified the necessary skills for new college graduates, areas where CRM programs could improve their curricula, and various approaches in and out of the classroom that are helpful in training students.

This plenary critically examines the role of English medium instruction (EMI) preparatory programmes in supporting student success across global higher education. Drawing on a systematic, critical review of empirical studies published between 2015 and 2025, it explores how such programmes influence learning outcomes, motivation, pedagogy, and equity. Through the narrative lens of a Turkish student, Eylül, the discussion highlights how linguistic proficiency alone seldom ensures disciplinary engagement or academic confidence. Evidence from recent EMI research demonstrates that programmes integrating language and content, authenticity, and translanguaging practices most effectively prepare students to ‘think through English’. The paper concludes by identifying gaps in longitudinal and cross-contextual evidence and calls for pedagogical and policy designs that move beyond language support toward sustainable, inclusive, and identity-affirming EMI education.

Political science concerns topics that can be highly relevant for politicians. Political science research and education offer insights that can help incumbents win elections or govern better. At the same time, the discipline provides knowledge that can be used to challenge politicians in office, for example, on how to organise mass protests or effective opposition parties. Therefore, politicians in power may have mixed feelings about the existence of political science departments. Some will encourage their establishment, while others – perhaps especially autocrats – may try to contain their presence or control their location. We study the existence and placement of political science units at universities across the world and assess the extent to which these features vary with regime type. Using large-N data on university subdivisions, we examine cross-national variation in existence and within-country variation in the location of political science departments. We find surprisingly few substantial differences along the democracy–autocracy continuum: Political science units, on average, are no more frequent in democracies. Across regime types, political science units are about equally likely to be located at public (versus private) institutions, and similarly likely to be placed at universities closer to the capital.

In 2024, the Women and Equalities Select Committee in the UK Parliament published a report entitled Misogyny in Music. It included the recommendations that ‘music colleges, conservatoires and other educational settings need to do more to address the gendering of instruments, roles and genres and improve the visibility of and support for female role models’. While there is a dearth of policy levers available to implement this recommendation, this article critically analyses three existing policy/regulatory frameworks that could be used for its implementation in England. The article also highlights a significant limitation of the report – its exclusion of trans and non-binary musicians.

There are multiple intersecting crises afflicting society, from environmental devastation to the collapse of democracy, from economic exploitation to gratuitous violence, in the so-called “metacrisis.” Universities have both contributed to these crises in various ways, but have also tried to prevent them In this paper, we consider our responses to the metacrisis from our various disciplinary perspectives as four university educators from different scholarly traditions in one institution in Aotearoa New Zealand, We draw from our teaching experiences and our theoretical perspectives to engage in a reflective conversation with each other about how we may address the challenges of the metacrisis. Our conversation illustrates the potential benefits that such reflections, amongst colleagues who are intimately connected to a range of crises, may have to elucidate knowledge, power and performativity, and considers how humility, in a variety of forms, may be important to navigate the metacrisis.

With the expulsion of the Central European University (CEU) and the establishment of public trust foundations, the academic world in Hungary has come under pressure unprecedented in the European Union (EU). The measures taken by the Orbán government have been decried as an assault on academic freedom, undermining the fundamental values of the EU. While the European Commission is obligated to uphold European values as per the treaties, its capacity to do so with regard to academic freedom has been underwhelming. In this paper, I argue that the EU is institutionally handicapped in its approach to protecting academic freedom because of, firstly, a lack of competences in the field of higher education and, secondly, an insufficient definition of academic freedom in EU law. By finding innovative ways to link the protection of academic freedom to its competences and by institutionalising an operational definition of academic freedom, the EU could better protect academic freedom and universities in general in its Member States.

Universities embody a fundamental paradox: they are institutions created to solve civilizational problems that have themselves become primary sites where such problems are generated. This paper develops “crack literacy” – the capacity to read institutional breaking patterns as information rather than failure. Through methodological engagement with kintsugi, the Japanese art of golden repair, we examine how universities operate as recursive systems where attempted solutions intensify original contradictions. Drawing on Byung-Chul Han’s temporal analysis, Isabelle Stengers’ concept of “learning to be affected,” and Bruno Latour’s hybrid networks, the investigation reveals why conventional approaches to institutional reform consistently reproduce the patterns they attempt to address. Following Yoko Tawada’s literary practice, this exploration allows itself to be shaped by the impossible conditions it investigates, developing forms of attention that conventional academic discourse cannot provide. Kintsugi doesn’t eliminate breaking but creates conditions for fragments to hold together differently. Universities practising crack literacy would learn to work with contradiction as structural necessity rather than problem to solve, developing temporal patience adequate to transformation that cannot be rushed.

This article explores the work of the UK Political Studies Association Teaching and Learning Specialist Group in promoting the development of teaching and learning. It was prompted by the invitation to take part in a panel on ‘Advancing Political Science Education in Europe’ at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) 6th General Conference held in Reykjavik in August 2011. It begins with a brief overview of scholarship relating to political studies teaching, before turning to consider the activities of the Teaching and Learning Group. The article sets the work of the Group within the context of other bodies that promote learning and teaching such as the Higher Education Academy, before presenting some concluding observations on the potential for future collaboration at a European level.