Re-Envisioning Academic Citizenship

Academic citizenship underpins the day-to-day functioning and long-term sustainability of universities, as well as supporting organizational learning, ensuring universities can continue to make a relevant contribution to changing needs in society. It helps strengthen connections between universities and the world beyond academia.

The pandemic and new developments in the digital space have had a transformative effect on the higher education landscape, making it necessary to revisit discussion about academic citizenship, explore the extent to which it continues to act as the glue that holds institutions together, and consider which elements should be reintroduced or strengthened to encourage collaboration and partnership.

Re-envisioning Academic Citizenship examines the concept and importance of citizenship through several different and ever evolving lenses, offering guidelines for universities to develop definitions that resonate with their own mission and the specificities of their own context. These guidelines offer support to colleagues in managerial roles to develop academic career framework policy documents; to implement career progression policies which benefit individuals and institutions in equitable measure; and to design initiatives that incentivize and support citizenship behaviours and meaningful partnership and collaboration. Simultaneously, the insights will help academics, at all career stages, understand how to enact citizenship for wider benefit.

Mark Sterling is Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Staffing) and Beale Professor of Civil Engineering at Manchester Metropolitan University. Mark led the redevelopment of the academic career framework at the University of Birmingham and the introduction of academic citizenship as a core component of the framework. In a number of leadership and management roles in his university, Mark has evaluated accounts of academic citizenship as well as guiding and supporting the implementation of academic citizenship initiatives. Mark’s publications profile includes over 150 collaborative, peer-reviewed outputs.

Lia Blaj-Ward is Associate Professor in the School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University, UK. Lia’s professional interests are in the area of academic literacies and practice. Since 2013 she has mentored colleagues applying for Advance HE professional recognition and has recently become an Advance HE Aurora mentor, supporting gender equality in the workplace. Mentoring is also fundamental to Lia’s role as Chair (2022-2025) of the BALEAP Accreditation Scheme, which accredits academic literacies courses for students who use English as an additional language.