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Purpose: The study aims to investigate the state of higher education (HE) leadership research after the intensified focus on teaching and learning (TL) in academia. Design/methodology/approach: The authors clarify the use of key concepts in English-medium empirical journal articles published between 2017 and 2021 by analysing 64 publications through qualitative content analysis. Findings: The analysed papers on leadership of TL in HE activate a number of concepts, the commonest concepts being academic leadership, distributed leadership, educational leadership, transformational leadership, leadership and transformative leadership. Even if the papers highlight partly overlapping aspects of leadership, the study finds a rationale for the use of several concepts in the HE context. Contrary to the expectation raised in earlier scholarship, no holistic framework evolves from within the recent research to reveal the contribution that leadership of TL makes to leadership in HE generally. Research limitations/implications: Limitations: Nearly 40 per cent of the analysed articles are from the United States of America (USA), United Kingdom (UK), Australia and Canada, which leaves large areas of the world aside. Implications: The found geographical incoherence might be remediated and the research of leadership of TL in HE generally led forward by widening the cultural and situational diversity in the field. Originality/value: This research contributes to an enhanced understanding of the field of leadership in TL in HE in that it frames the concepts used in recent research and makes the differences, similarities and rationale between concepts visible.

Purpose: Microteaching is a teacher training method based on microclasses (groups of four or five students) and microlessons lasting no more than 5-20 min. Since it was first explored in the late 20th century in experiments at Stanford University, microteaching has evolved at the interdisciplinary level. The purpose of this paper is to examine the networks found via an analytical bibliometric study of the scientific output related with microteaching in teacher training, through a study and examination of the Web of Science database. Design/methodology/approach: This research was conducted with the VOSviewer tool for content analysis through data mining and scientific network structure mapping by means of the normalisation technique. This technique is based on the association strength indicator, which is interpreted as a measurement of the similarity of the units of analysis. Findings: Two hundred and nine articles were thus obtained from the Web of Science database. The networks generated and the connections among the various items, co-authorship and co-citation are presented in the results, which clearly indicates that there are significant authors and institutions in the field of microteaching. The largest cluster is made up of institutions such as Australian Catholic University. The most often-cited document is by Rich and Hannafin. Allen (1968), who defines microteaching as a technique based on microclasses and microlessons, is the author most often cited and has the largest number of connections. Research limitations/implications: This research's limitations concern either aspects that lie beyond the study's possibilities or goals that have proved unattainable. The second perspective, which focuses on skill transfer, contains a lower percentage of documents and therefore has a weaker central documentary structure. Lastly, the authors have also had to bear in mind the fact that the scientific output hinges upon a highly specific realm, the appearance and/or liberalisation of digital technologies and access to those technologies in the late 20th century. Originality/value: This research shows that microteaching is a promising area of research that opens up vast possibilities in higher education teacher training for application in the realm of technologies. This paper could lead to several lines of future research, such as access to and the universal design of learning from the standpoint of different communication and pedagogical models based on microteaching.

The higher education efficiency evaluation model using the data envelopment analysis method has interested many researchers. This paper uses bibliometric analysis on publications extracted from the Scopus database to provide a comprehensive overview of research publications on the measurement of higher education efficiency based on data envelopment analysis: its growth rate, major collaboration networks, the most important and popular research topic. A total of 169 related publications were collected and analyzed from 1988 to 2021. The analysis results show that: Publications published every year have increased sharply in the last six years; The quality of publications is relatively high as publications tend to be published in journals with high-ranking indexes; Countries with the most influence in studies on this topic are: Italy, China, Spain, the USA, and the United Kingdom; Authors with the most influence in this research direction are Agasisti T., Abbott M., Doucouliagos C., Avkiran N.K., and Johnes J.; The research cooperation among countries and among affiliations is not strong. Finally, the paper has provided recommendations for future studies based on the findings.

The fragmentation of academic work and its uneven distribution among academic staff have produced particular challenges for new entrants to teaching in Higher Education, Early Career Teachers [ECTs]. In this paper, documentary analysis of the narratives of fourteen ECTs, who worked across six different continents, was undertaken. The findings highlight the diverse forms of precarity that ECTs face, which cut across migratory, identitarian, economic, and ideological dimensions. It discusses ECTs' reflections on their expectations of teaching and their adaptation to the demands of neoliberal Higher Education. Drawing from their narratives and Sevil Sümer's theories of differentiated academic citizenship, ECTs are recognised as 'precarious academic citizens'. This has important implications for revealing the unique circumstances of this group, thereby opening further questions as regards their mentoring and support to enable them to be situated more equally as citizens of the academy.

Although concepts such as research without borders have become more commonplace in recent decades, few studies have investigated the capabilities that global researchers require to cross both cultural and disciplinary borders. This paper explores global capabilities along with strategies and spaces that may facilitate academic researchers' acquisition and development of global research competence. The study's dataset comprises responses of 26 participants across 15 countries -- all of whom are members of a specific comparative education society -- who contributed their views via e-questionnaire. Findings indicate that research capacity building is a dynamic process and global competence calls for complex skills and conscious attitudes. Commitment to expand scientific curiosity beyond one's own culture and academic discipline appears to be a main criterion in achieving global competence. Results of this study are not meant to be prescriptive but rather exploratory and informative for a broad group of academic stakeholders.

This paper examines the PhD by publication in the humanities and social sciences in US, UK, Canadian and Australian universities. A set of PhDs by publication from each of these countries were collected for the study. The theses were analysed to see to what extent they fitted, or not, with discussions of thesis types described in previous research into the PhD by publication. Interviews with students and supervisors were carried out to investigate the choices that students made in their writing. University rules for the submission of PhDs by publication and related policy documents are also examined. The study found that there seems to be a preference for different types of PhD by publication in each of the countries. In the US they were all prospective PhDs with the work being especially written for the thesis. In the UK, by contrast, retrospective PhDs, the PhD by published work, largely dominate. Canada was similar to the US, at least in the area of study where the data were collected for the paper, Education. In Australia, both prospective and retrospective PhDs were found, although it was the former, the prospective PhD, which dominated.

Designing strategic pedagogical change through the lens of a student experience that is "yet to be experienced" offers a critical frame for embedding the impacts of transition, uncertainty, belonging and the complexity of the student journey into the co-design of teaching and learning. A digital storytelling approach extends the notion of the student experience beyond the singular and metricised descriptions common in online student satisfaction survey instruments into a rhizomatic, resonant living community that resides in the intersecting spaces of work, life, play and learning. This paper describes an ethnographic-like model of collecting and evaluating the student experience through a semi-structured digital storytelling methodology that supports both co-design and cogenerative dialogue as a form of curriculum enhancement. The paper outlines how the Student Experience Digital Storytelling model was iteratively designed, deployed, and then evaluated through participatory action research-informed case studies at the University of Sydney Business School (Australia) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom) that embedded the student experience into the co-design of curriculum and assessment interventions.

Widening participation has been a vehicle to facilitate access and support towards the successful completion of university studies for underrepresented groups who are less likely to pursue higher education. Yet, despite its widely accepted importance and adoption across countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom, studies to date remain largely fragmented -- often employed through the lens of a single institution, or a particular priority group. Amidst this backdrop, universities and other higher education providers are increasingly probed as to their role in supporting social capital mobility, of which widening participation plays a vital component in delivering wider societal imperatives. In addition, the COVID-19 effect has worsened university participation and completion rates, as the global pandemic has placed vulnerable students (often those involved in widening participation initiatives) in more precocious conditions than ever before. Nevertheless, the purpose of this paper is to conduct a systematic literature review comprising 102 journal articles that derive 15 meta-themes to provide a timely introspection of widening participation, show key trends over time, and chart future areas of investigation for scholars and practitioners in this space.

Current research suggests that students who struggle with grammar, spelling, mechanics and other "problems of ability," as well as students who suffer from "problems of engagement," as well as those students who see reading and writing as a chore, can benefit from creative writing assignments and learn to enjoy reading and writing on the college level through this genre of writing. This paper explores several benefits from teaching creative writing in composition courses, and proposes that creative writing assignments be assigned to composition students as a precursor to teaching academic writing. Several Anglophone countries worldwide have been deploying creative writing pedagogies in their English classrooms as replacements for, or supplements to, other forms of college writing with great success.

This paper provides an account of the topological and its description of contemporary culture and use as a research methodology, a topological lens, generally, and in education research specifically. Some commentary is proffered on the relationships between the topological and the topographical, between relations and locations. A critical account is then provided on each of the papers in the special issue on the topological in education research and the specific contributions of each. The editors of the special issue make the important point that the topological is a spatio-temporal phenomenon, not just a spatial one. The topological does not exist in time and space, but rather constructs both and they change in a conjoint manner. As such, a topological lens rejects a construction of space as static and of time (and the temporal) as simply linear and chronological. The topological has been facilitated and articulated by and through practices of commensuration, datafication and digitalisation, flows and scapes, global connectivities and new relations, mobilities of various kinds and multiple networks. The paper argues that much greater emphasis has been given to the spatial in topological research; that is, there has been some neglect of the temporal in the spatio-temporal character of topologies.

Humanitarian events are increasing globally, both in number and intensity. In response, the international community spends approximately US $30 billion annually to alleviate both the immediate consequences of these climatic, geographic, and human-induced events but also to support mitigation and recovery. Over the past two decades, the humanitarian sector has increasingly professionalised. One under-studied aspect of this professionalisation is an increase in postgraduate studies in humanitarian action over the last 20 years. Despite this increase, there is no agreement on core curriculum or pedagogy across humanitarian studies courses. How do current Masters of Humanitarian Assistance (MHA) offerings converge and differ, and how can such courses further their contribution to the humanitarian endeavour? This paper surveys 26 anglophone courses offered in the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and Nigeria, exploring key characteristics of course entry requirements, flexibility, research, practical components, and academic foci. It does not recommend what a core curriculum for humanitarian courses should be, but does argue that core curriculum for humanitarian courses should be identified by relevant and diverse stakeholders such as affected communities, humanitarian agencies, disaster management bodies, and governments, to ensure that courses in this field provide appropriate learning outcomes. The paper suggests how such a 'charter' may be developed.

The abrupt emergence and spread of the COVID-19 virus compelled institutions worldwide to swiftly suspend face-to-face instruction in favor of a remote teaching mode. This extraordinary shift of instructional delivery created one of the biggest infrastructural, pedagogical and operational challenges for universities in recent history. As institutions that traditionally have been slow to respond to sudden external influences, universities struggled to respond effectively to COVID-19. Using the Human Systems Dynamics approach as conceptual framework, this paper retrospectively explores how academic staff adapted their Emergency Remote Teaching strategies and became more learning-agile to respond to such challenges in the future. This exploratory case-study article summarizes the results of a survey of teaching staff's readiness, experience and struggles with Emergency Remote Teaching during COVID-19 in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, at the height of the pandemic. A total of 73 usable responses were received between July 17 and August 7, 2020. The results were classified into four categories: (1) Preparation and training; (2) Faculty impressions of own teaching; (3) Faculty experience; and (4) Faculty impressions of student experience.

This paper examines responses to the trend for increasing participation in tertiary education, linking developments in higher education with those in apprenticeship systems, in Australia and the United Kingdom. In both sectors, expansion proceeded for several decades, but was robustly criticised in both countries. The expansion of access to these two forms of tertiary education, therefore, was contested and potentially precarious. The paper finds, through analysis of official data, that participation in higher education and in apprenticeship was actually almost static, or fell, in both countries in the 2010s. Yet criticism of expansion continued in media commentary during this decade. The paper both explains and takes issue with the arguments against expansion, which have been influential in both sectors. It discusses some ways forward to understand the phenomenon better, and also the need to address the problems caused by the restriction of opportunities. Comparative analysis between the two sectors has not previously been undertaken. It is argued in the paper that such analysis enriches the theoretical lenses through which expansion of access may be viewed, and that it may suggest avenues for future research, and perhaps, for advocacy.

AACSB adopted new and revised standards in 2020 that require business schools to demonstrate positive societal impact through internal and external activities. While many schools are already engaged in such activities, there seems to be no agreed-upon conceptualization or measurement of societal impact. This paper aims to help business schools organize, measure, and demonstrate their efforts to create positive societal impact and thus meet the updated AACSB standards. By using data from semi-structured interviews, this paper identifies different dimensions of positive societal impact and offers enablers and barriers in business school efforts to create such societal impact.

This paper focusses on our concerns about revelations about sexual harassment in universities and the inadequate responses whereby some universities seem more concerned about their own reputations than the care and protection of their students. Seldom do cases go to criminal court, instead they mostly fall within employment relations policies where the use of non-disclosure agreements are double edged, such that some perpetrators remain nameless even if the person offended against wants details made public. Of course if the staff member does not resign or take retirement prior to potential dismissal, but remains in the institution, the grapevine still works. Universities too often become complicit in cover-ups at the expense of further potential victims of sexual misconduct. It has been with much dismay that we found that despite extensive training and writing about ethics some senior professors in philosophy fields have been accused and found wanting, disabusing us of the virtue assumption. Despite these recent instances where perpetrators have been named and been publicised in the media, we found that this is not in fact new, so not only does the paper look to the past, but also extensively it uses contemporary accounts, reports and documents from USA, UK, South America, Australia, and New Zealand. These seem to be the tip of the iceberg, so our hope is that all students and staff in universities (and in fact all institutions where there are inherent power imbalances) will not only feel safe, but that they will be safe as universities become genuinely ethical institutions.

The paper provides an overview of the global research on graduate education. The study applied a combination of a bibliometric and social network analysis methods to bibliographic data from Thompson Reuters' Web of Science. More specifically, a keyword search approach was used to retrieve 2,454 articles on graduate education from 1996 until 2020. The set was processed with the VantagePoint software. The paper reports the findings in the form of lists of top scholars, research centres, and countries contributing to research on graduate education. The findings include similar lists of the key funding agencies, contributing disciplines and publication venues, as well as maps representing collaborative activity in the field between institutions, and countries. Finally, the frequency of utilisation of groups of author-supplied keywords is analysed to determine the basic thematic structure of the research on the topic. The originality of the paper consists in the fact that it represents the first attempt to map the landscape of research on graduate education using bibliographic data. It can be used to supplement the results of literature reviews on the topic, which apply a more in-depth content analysis-based approaches to a limited number of papers to determine the thematic structure of the field.

This special issue expands the scope of a panel presentation at the Society for Research into Higher Education Annual Conference 2019 and makes two identified contributions to the field. First, drawing from existing literature, this introductory paper proposes three categorisations of employability as: outcomes approach, process approach and conceptual approaches. This moves beyond normative conceptualisation of employability from mostly the outcomes approach. The applicability of the categorisation is further enumerated by the diversity of contributions in this special issue that highlights (a) the complexity in the field and (b) the interrelatedness of the categories. Second, the special issue puts together a rarely combined collection of global perspectives on conceptualisations of employability, and insights from research on little studied groups in Western and non-Western contexts (the UK, Portugal, Australia, the Indo-Pacific Region, Germany, Kenya and Kazakhstan). The papers, therefore, illustrate the need to widen our scope of understanding employability beyond current dominant perspectives. The broadening that is required in employability discourses is further needed in view of unprecedented disruption brought on higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. This suggests the need to rethink our conceptualisations of employability amidst uncertainty and potential disruption to the future of work.

Although the importance of developing students' academic literacies has been well-established, academic oracy has been forgotten. There is a paucity of attention to oracy in higher education, despite the key role played by students' oral communication in academic achievement and graduate employability. This study offers a scoping review of the international scholarly literature that does exist, to explore how oracy has been framed and discussed in higher education, and whether connections have been made with the equity agenda to widen participation to traditionally under-represented groups. Following Arksey and O'Malley's framework for scoping studies, the 31 papers reviewed suggest that oracy is framed in disparate ways, reflecting disconnected understandings of the range, breadth and possibilities for oracy teaching. An oracy as product perspective prevails in the studies, with oracy predominantly explored through monologic, monoglossic activities, assessments, and graduate attributes. The review has highlighted the need to recognise an "oracy for learning" perspective; to establish shared understandings of the features of oracy; and to embed the teaching of oracy practices that support all students, regardless of linguistic and educational background, within their disciplinary learning.

This paper provides an analysis of the literature on transnational education to identify the key challenges and success factors for the sustainable operation of transnational higher education (TNE) programmes as perceived by key stakeholders. Probing the stakeholders' perspectives and applying a systematic approach, this study analyses 227 English-written articles retrieved from the Web of Science database published from 2000 to 2021. Key challenges identified include difficulties in managing the TNE programmes, ensuring quality assurance, adapting the curricula to the local contexts, accommodating offshore students' learning styles, creating studying environments for TNE students equivalent to those in the home institutions, ensuring preparedness of the academic staff, and facilitating the knowledge transfer in the host countries. The analysis also highlights six factors for the sustainable development of TNE programmes, including the effectiveness of the operations, the internationalization of the curricula, the transnational experience of the students, the development of the transnational staff, the existence of a proper regulatory framework in the host countries, and the development of a global systematic data collection for quality assurance. In addition, the evidence collected suggests that while the transition from domestic into a foreign programme can be rewarding, it demands appropriate planning and implementation.

Higher education's rapid expansion is paired with growing social expectations of its benefits and concern on its teaching quality. In response to these, institutional/national surveys based on an array of theories are widely used in universities for quality assurance, enhancement, and benchmarking. This paper reviews three major types of instruments used for such purposes, including two distinct schools of theory that have guided the development of such assessment in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom and then spread to the other parts of the world. The theories shaping the development of the two instruments, the dimensions assessed, and the challenges and criticisms involved when using such instruments for quality assurance are each discussed. This review concludes with a call for comparisons of different lines of research in this area, discussions on student learning experience that include more diverse characterizations of student experience across different educational contexts, development of tools to enable distributed leadership among teachers, and encouragement of students as partners for quality enhancement in higher education.

International student mobility (ISM) has emerged as an important field of study that various nations and organizations have been attaching great importance to. This paper studies the drivers of international student mobility, using a competing destinations model for the international student flows among 35 OECD countries in the period 2004-2018, by integrating the motivations for ISM. We find that OECD students are motivated by both career orientation and personal and cultural experience when decide to move abroad for study. Nonetheless, remarkable differences emerge when considering country subgroups (origin countries, wealthier, English-speaking top destination (namely US, the UK, Canada, and Australia), and European countries, students search for personal and cultural experience, valuing the lifestyle of the destination country. Students seeking for education quality are instead polarised in the rest of the OECD countries.

Academic libraries, apart from their main function, which is to provide information services to academic communities, may also perform a number of social roles in the broad meaning of the term. Accordingly, they now tend to serve as the third place offering inclusion and animation activities to academic as well as local communities (including potential students) and to groups in risk of social exclusion (immigrants, persons with disabilities, senior citizens, etc.) or in need of various kinds of care and support. However, for libraries to be able to fulfil those tasks, they need properly trained staff who not only have the required competencies but also the right social attitudes. The paper presents an analysis of the social attitudes of academic librarians from twenty countries across the world as compared to the personnel of other types of libraries. The level of individual social capital, activity in social networks, aspirations in life and social and civic engagement were investigated. It was noted that the respondents tend to undervalue the importance of the work done by libraries for local communities. At the same time, the research showed that academic librarians have a somewhat lower level of individual social capital and trust than public librarians and less extensive social networks. Nonetheless, they are open to relationships with others, which enables them to engage in various social projects.

International students leave their countries to pursue their educational goals in a different country and must adapt to succeed. However, they may face challenges when adapting to and learning a new culture. This study investigates the challenges common to international students in their host countries and summarizes the publishing trends. A literature search of peer-reviewed articles published in Scopus, Taylor & Francis, EBSCO Host, Web of Science, Springer, PubMed, and Wiley Online over 21 years (2002-2022) was done for data collection. After the screening, a total of 175 articles were included in this review and analyzed with content analysis. The findings show that the top four destinations for international students (USA, UK, Australia, and Canada) produced the most articles about international students' challenges. Additionally, most papers investigated more than one challenge, and sociocultural (82.9%) and academic challenges (82.3%) were the most researched, with language issues as the primary cause. The results also show no changes or improvement in the challenges of international students in 21 years, and areas such as psychological and economic challenges need more research. These challenges and other trends found in the articles are discussed and directions for future research are suggested.

Ongoing shortages of quality teachers has prompted policy interest into career changers as potential solutions. Although Initial Teacher Education (ITE) comprises one-third career changers, little is known about this group. This paper presents a scoping review of career changers' motivations/decisions to choose teaching as a career. Themes from inductive thematic analysis are deductively synthesised using Margaret Archer's theories on emergent properties. Knowledge of the profession, time, and career conditions enabled decisions to teach, while the status of teaching, beliefs about teaching, and money could enable but often constrained. Recommendations are suggested for attracting quality career changers into teaching; these include further research, increased flexibility in ITE, teaching taster pathways, and raising respect for the profession.

The experiences of academics caught up in the rise of teaching academic (TA) (teaching-only) roles in Australia, the UK, the USA, and Canada, are not well documented in the literature. This paper describes a recent university restructure that resulted in a significant increase in teaching-only positions being created. Despite the claims by the university that teaching-only roles demonstrate excellence and innovation in teaching, the actual experiences of TA in the last few years have highlighted a common finding of "the perceived low value of the TA role and confusion about what the role entails" (Bennett et al., 75:271-286, 2018, p. 271). We use a more local conception of regime of truth as a tool (Gore, 1993) for reflecting on possibilities for resistance and re-imagining how we might think about ourselves beyond 'second tier'. By understanding that a reconceptualisation of ourselves is simultaneously within a given regime but also outside of it, allowing for reading the regime and thinking about the production of that regime in ways that open up possibilities for creating a space for talking and sharing both research and teaching, which is also within the 'cultural web' of the university.

Universities have increasingly adopted "first-generation status" as a new category for addressing equity in higher education, especially in the UK and Australia. This category targets students whose parents do not have a university degree and therefore are "newcomers" to higher education. While the category is well-intentioned, given the persistence of inequitable enrolment patterns and the need to widen participation, it has resulted in a fairly narrow and limiting view of first-generation students. Typically, students have been set in binary opposition to their peers with university-educated parents and consequently positioned within deficit discourses -- as sharing a similar set of "problems" that need to be remedied by policy and practice. This paper problematises such a totalising depiction of first-generation entrants by examining diversity "within the category" rather than simply demarcating "differences" from their continuing-generation peers. Drawing on focus group data from 198 prospective first-generation students enrolled in government schools in New South Wales, Australia, we utilise the Bourdieusian lens of social capital to explore the multiple social networks within which young people are situated. We propose a new continuum that better captures how students are differentially positioned in social space, and identify three clusters based on their capacity to mobilise capital -- "inheritors", "opportunists", and "outsiders". In so doing, we unsettle the symbolic boundary around what it means to "be first", and argue that this more nuanced reconceptualisation of first-generation entry is critical if the category is to be a meaningful vehicle for redressing historical exclusions and widening participation in higher education.

The analysis of exemplars of different quality is a potentially powerful tool in enabling students to understand assessment expectations and appreciate academic standards. Through a systematic review methodology, this paper synthesises exemplar-based research designs, exemplar implementation and the educational effects of exemplars. The review of 40 empirical exemplar-based studies indicated frequent use of post-intervention evaluation designs. The integrated use of exemplars and strategies such as rubrics, peer or self-assessment was a major pedagogic feature to enhance students' understanding of standards and aid their generation of internal feedback for self-monitoring. There was evidence suggesting that the combined use of exemplars with these strategies could advance students' academic performance and development of self-regulated learning. The review results set future directions for exemplar-based studies: quantitative research would benefit from controlled manipulation of variables to disentangle the effects of exemplars and those of other strategies; qualitative research could profitably use self-reflective diaries, think aloud protocols or classroom observations to develop deeper understandings of exemplar implementation. The key pedagogical implication recommends students' production of an assignment draft prior to exposure to exemplars so that they can compare their own work with exemplars and then make improvements independently of teachers.

Suellen Shay's work on higher education curricula foregrounds the importance of professional curricula which face inwards to disciplines and outwards to practice. This paper builds on her framing of professional curricula, distinctive in the differentiated knowledge base and the social relations which legitimate them. I extend Shay's work deeper into the internal governance structures underpinning curriculum decisions in engineering. Two dimensions of governance are explored: central control from the Faculty of Engineering over its departments; and the authority of individuals in department-level curriculum and accreditation roles over their colleagues. The empirical focus is on curricula reform towards 'graduate attributes' in engineering education, through a comparative study of eight universities in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Singapore, and Australia. The findings show that research-intensive universities are shielded from the full implications of accreditation requirements, while teaching-intensive universities are more likely to invest in developing the governance processes and systems demanded by professional bodies.

Neoliberal reform of the university sector has resulted in increasing numbers of academics employed on casual or fixed-term contracts. While there is an emergent body of literature on issues of precarity in the academy, relatively little attention has been paid to the roles and responsibilities of those tenured academics who employ and "manage" non-tenured researchers. The work involved in hiring and managing a contract researcher is rarely acknowledged or supported, and managers receive little to no training. In this paper, we draw on Dorothy Smith's feminist sociological approach to analyse interviews with 22 non-tenured researchers to examine how managerial relationships shape the employment experiences of those working precariously. We argue that tenured academics have ethical responsibilities to provide a working environment that is fair, supports the ongoing development and wellbeing of non-tenured staff, and challenges dominant discourses of precarious academics as 'other'.

In this paper, we explore the improvisations made in examination practices in higher education during the pandemic of 2020. Drawing on STS, we start from the theoretical assumption that examinations constitute an obligatory passage point in universities and colleges: a sacred point which students need to pass if they want to gain recognized qualifications. We base our analysis of higher education examinations on cases from six countries around the world: Australia, Belgium, Chile, India, Sweden and the UK. We use the analytical heuristic of choreography to follow the movements, tensions and resistance of the 'emergency examinations' as well as the re-orderings of actors and stages that have inevitably occurred. In our analytical stories we see the interplay between the maintenance of fixed and sacred aspects of examinations and the fluidity of improvisations aimed at meeting threats of spreading COVID-19. These measures have forced the complex network of examinations both to reinforce some conventional actors and to assemble new actors and stages, thus creating radically new choreographies. Although higher education teaching and didactics are being framed as a playground for pedagogical innovation with digital technologies, it is clear from our data that not all educational activities can be so easily replicated.