Higher Education Researcher – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode, Felipe Sánchez interviews Onur Orkut, a doctoral researcher in higher education at Lancaster University. Onur discusses his research piece published as a working paper by CHERE@LU, where he engages in a fictional conversation with Uta Hagen, inspired by her book "Respect for Acting." They delve into the themes of acting, capital, and exclusion, exploring how acting techniques can be exclusive and how to make them more accessible. Onur also highlights the parallels between the acting world and academia, emphasizing the importance of looking behind the curtain and embracing authenticity.

Find out more about Onur on Twitter and Instagram @onurorkut, take a look at his research site, or explore his personal artistic site.

In this episode, Janja Komljenovic talks with Elizabeth J. Cook, who is a Senior Analyst, Strategy and Performance at Edith Cowan University and a doctoral researcher in the PhD in Higher Education, Evaluation and Enhancement at Lancaster University. Elizabeth talks about her doctoral research, which developed and implemented a new relational employability approach for universities. She describes her conceptualisation of relational employability as a broader, holistic and interconnected understanding of employability that incorporates three equally important elements: (1) basic individualistic career development, career management and careers (getting into the workforce and having a successful career to benefit oneself); (2) humanistic interactions and contributions throughout careers; and (3) more-than-human interactions and contributions throughout careers. Elizabeth explains how she conducted this research, using design research methodology and mixed methods, and describes her publishing adventures while being a student at Lancaster, with some publishing tips that may benefit other doctoral researchers.

Elizabeth’s ORCID Profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8406-4049

Elizabeth’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/ejcook4

Publications discussed in this episode:

• Cook, E. J. (2022). A narrative review of graduate employability models: their paradigms, and relationships to teaching and curricula. Journal of Teaching and Learning for Graduate Employability, 13(1), 37–64. https://doi.org/10.21153/jtlge2022vol13no1art1483
• Lacković, N., & Olteanu, A. (In Press). Graduate Employment Futures and Relational Employability: In Conversation with Elizabeth J. Cook. In Relational and multimodal higher education. Routledge.

In this episode, Professor Velda McCune talks about the wicked problems project. This project is about how teachers in higher education prepare students for wicked problems. Wicked problems are messy real-world problems that lack obvious solutions and often involve stakeholders with contrasting world views. Examples of wicked problems include the climate emergency, conflict and pandemics. Vel and her colleagues interviewed teachers who taught about these problems, asking them what they did in their teaching and what sort of learning they hoped would happen.

Wicked problems project website link: http://www.wickedproblems.ed.ac.uk/

Talking to Sylvie is Olga Rotar, a doctoral researcher and a member of CHERE@LU.

Sylvie Lomer is a Lecturer in Education at the Manchester Institute for Education, University of Manchester. In this episode, Sylvie talks about her programme of research building on her critical study of UK policy on international student recruitment. Two linked projects are currently running with colleagues from UoM, one focusing on pedagogy (with Dr Jenna Mittelmeier),and one focusing on institutional policies (with Dr Steve Courtney and Dr Jenna Mittelmeier). Both projects look to examine how dominant narratives about international students shape academic environments, from the classroom to the university as a whole.

Twitter handle: @SE_Lomer

Project website link: https://internationalpedagogies.home.blog/

Talking to Sylvie is Olga Rotar, a doctoral researcher and a member of CHERE@LU.

Sina Westa is a research associate at the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. In this episode, Sina talks about her research on academic freedom, conducted during her PhD at the University of Ljubljana within the Marie Curie ITN framework (Universities in the Knowledge Economy). Sina highlights that academic freedom is a highly political concept that is dependent on time and space. On the one hand, exercising this right is connected to a high degree of social responsibility; and on the other hand, it needs to be exercised continuously to be safeguarded. Especially in times of the current COVID pandemic and the connected impetus of science and research, more attention needs to be given to an open discussion of academic freedom and individual freedoms in more broadly.

Talking to Sina is Dr Janja Komljenovic from CHERE@LU.

Lynn McAlpine is Visiting Professor in the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University. Lynn has a long and distinguished career as a higher education researcher and academic teacher. Her recent research looks into various aspects of early career researchers, issues of identities and the PhD process generally. In this episode, she addresses this question: What are the key messages from the literature for those embarking on their supervised PhD research? In doing this, she draws on what is known from research about successful PhD completion and how doctoral researchers can have a fruitful, even enjoyable PhD journey. The episode is introduced by Professor Paul Trowler; there is a brief discussion between them of Lynn’s comments towards the end of the episode. Lynn’s advice will be of interest and benefit to anyone on the traditional route PhD or entering or in thesis research of a structured PhD programme.

Professor Paul Trowler is the Director of the PhD in Higher Education: Research, Evaluation and Enhancement, and a member of CHERE@LU.

Jan McArthur is a Senior Lecturer at the Educational Research Department at Lancaster University and an Editor of Arts and Humanities in Higher Education. Informed by critical theory, her work “Assessment for Social Justice: achievement, uncertainty and recognition” advocates a philosophical re-interpretation of the role of higher education assessment in furthering social justice. Jan argues that assessment is a powerful force in shaping how and what students learn. Because of this, assessment is therefore also key to the social justice mission of the university.

Talking to Jan is Olga Rotar, a doctoral researcher and a member of CHERE@LU. 

Adam Matthews is a researcher at the University of Birmingham. In this episode, Adam talks about his paper co-authored with Dr Ben Kotzee: The rhetoric of the UK higher education Teaching Excellence Framework: a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of TEF2 provider statements. A key methodology in this work is discourse analysis using the methods of corpus and computational linguistics. The paper concludes that employment, employability and outcomes are the key themes of successful Teaching Excellence Framework submissions, made by UK universities in 2017. Adam expands on some of the issues and contradictions at play when we conceptualise employment as the primary identifier of teaching excellence.  

Talking to Adam is is Olga Rotar, doctoral researcher and a member of CHERE@LU.

Olga Rotar is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Educational Research. In this episode, Olga talks about the results of her PhD project. She explains alternative ways of experiencing online learning by the adult student population and suggests that online educators should promote high-level learning experiences that lead to high-level learning outcomes. Olga argues that there is a need to expand a definition of “success” in online higher education. 

Talking to Olga, is Dr Janja Komljenovic, a Lecturer of Higher Education at Lancaster University and the Director of CHERE@LU. 

In 2020, we are celebrating 25 years of the Doctoral Programme in Educational Research - Higher Education (DPER).  Throughout this time, the programme has offered students an opportunity  to become higher education researchers. It was one of the first  doctoral programmes in the field of higher education research.

We organised the celebrations through a webinar series. The kick-off panel was held on 2 September. It was focused on higher education as a research field more  broadly, and how it has developed in time. The speakers also reflected on the role  of doctoral programmes and research centres in establishing higher  education as a research field. The speakers were:

• Dr Jelena Brankovic (Bielefeld University, Germany). She is the coordinator of the Early Career Higher Education Researchers (ECHER) network, and a member of the Board of Governors of CHER (Consortium of Higher Education Researchers).
• Prof Paul Ashwin (Lancaster University). Paul is Head of the Educational Research Department. Paul is a co-ordinating editor of Higher Education, and co-editor of the Bloomsbury book series 'Understanding Student Experiences of Higher Education'. He is in the management committee of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).
• Prof Malcolm Tight (Lancaster University). Malcolm is past Director of DPER of many years, and researcher of the higher education field. Malcolm is the editor of the book series International Perspectives on Higher Education Research, the editorial advisory board member of the Journal of Education and Work, and past editor of Studies in Higher Education. 

The panel was chaired by Dr Janja Komljenovic (Lancaster University). Janja is Director of DPER, and of the CHERE@LU. 

This episode is the recording of the panel.