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...

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...

Amon Ezike is a PhD researcher in the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University. In this episode, Amon talks about bridging the cultural gaps among English Speaking International students in UK Higher Education. She talks about the cultural challenges faced by these students and how these challenges could be mitigated through the use of technology. In addition, she talks about the need for UK institutions and policymakers to understand and address such challenges faced by...

Paul Ashwin is a Professor of Higher Education, Head of the Educational Research Department at Lancaster University and Deputy Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education. His research is focused on the educational role of higher education. He is interested in how higher education curricula can be designed to help transform students' understanding of themselves and the world. He is also interested in the role of policies in shaping the education offered by higher education...

Don Passey is a Professor in the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University. Don’s research interests include, but are not limited to the implementation and management of leading-edge technologies, teaching and learning outcomes that arise from them, and how technologies support different groups of learners. In this podcast, Don talks about his project on developing ongoing uses of technologies in post-compulsory education in the UK and Malaysia. In this study, Don and his...

Daniel Clark is the Head of Technology Enhanced Learning at the University of Kent and a PhD researcher at Lancaster University. In this talk, Daniel draws upon his professional experiences and applies a critical lens to the emergent rhetoric of EdTech in post-pandemic HE. Daniel discusses his recent paper; a critical discourse analysis of sector-orientated literature published in response to the pandemic. Daniel argues that whilst technology may have been the ‘saviour’ of HE from the...

In the podcast, Dr Tore Bernt Sørensen talks about the roles, ideas, workings and influence of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in global education governance, historically and currently. The podcast draws especially on the special issue Re-reading the OECD and education: the emergence of a global governing complex, of which Tore was a guest editor together with Christian Ydesen (Aalborg University) and Susan L. Robertson (University of Cambridge). The special...

Dr Hemy Ramiel is a postdoctoral researcher in the sociology, communication and political sciences department in the Open University in Israel. In this episode, Hemy talks about his research of an Israeli edtech R&D unit and a startup incubator. He discusses his choice of studying the edtech field through this organisation and the notion of disruption as the primary logic for the units’ activities. Also, the logic of disruption can be understood as a perspective for understanding the...

Dr Richard Budd is a Lecturer in Higher Education at Lancaster University. In this episode, Richard talks about his 3DHEI project. This research explores how a university’s different dimensions – social composition, organisation culture, and the physical campus itself – mediate students’ experiences. Richard spoke to a diverse group of over 40 students at a UK university about how those elements are perceived by them, and how they impact how it ‘feels’ to be a student there. It became clear...

Dr Miguel Antonio Lim is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the School of Environment, Education, and  Development (SEED) at the University of Manchester. Miguel's research interests include internationalization of higher education, East Asian and transnational higher education, university rankings and performance metrics. He critically studies the institutional strategies of East Asian and Chinese Universities to build ‘World-Class’ Universities, establish transnational partnerships, and...

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...

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...

Dr. 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...

Professor 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,...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

Murat Öztok is a Lecturer at the Social Justice and TEL Doctoral Programmes at Lancaster University. In his episode, Murat talks about his book, The Hidden Curriculum of Online Learning: Understanding Social Justice through Critical Pedagogy, which challenges the current understandings of social justice in the field of online higher education. Murat explains his perspective on equity, provides examples of how cultural hegemony creates unfair learning experiences, and argues that while online...

This is a special episode serving as an introduction to the webinar series celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Doctoral Programme in Educational Research - Higher Education (DPER). A series of webinars is organised throughout September 2020 starting with the kick-off panel on 2 September. In this episode, Dr Janja Komljenovic, the Director of the programme, is joined by Dr Jan McArthur and Dr Ann-Marie Houghton, who are both teaching staff, as well as alumni of the programme. They are in...

Paul Trowler is Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Research and is Director of the fully online PhD in Higher Education: Research, Evaluation and Enhancement at Lancaster University. In this episode, Paul talks about his new book “Accomplishing Change in Teaching and Learning Regimes: Higher Education and the Practice Sensibility” which offers a new way of seeing the professional world in higher education through conceptually informed Teaching and Learning regimes...

Melissa James is an alumna of the programme PhD in Higher Education: Research, Evaluation and Enhancement at Lancaster University, and a Director of the Undergraduate Programs of the Faculty of Business, University of Prince Edward Island. Her research explores how practitioners (or staff) of international student recruitment at higher education institutions perceive their institutional strategic plans. It examines their perceptions of strategic plans on their practice and how it shapes...

Matthew is a doctoral researcher on the programme PhD in Higher Education: Research, Evaluation and Enhancement at Lancaster University, and Deputy Chief Executive in the Students' Union at Buckinghamshire New University.  Matthew talks about his recent research, which explores quality assurance agencies' use of students in external review and accreditation panels. Matthew outlines the context, methodology, findings, and implications for the practice of his qualitative study. In particular,...

Elizabeth Cook is a doctoral researcher on the programme PhD in Higher Education: Research, Evaluation and Enhancement at Lancaster University, and a Senior Analyst at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia.  Having begun her PhD in October 2019, Elizabeth talks about her early experiences in the PhD programme and provides tips for students in the programme. Elizabeth discusses her recently completed research – a critical discourse study that explored the effectiveness of collaboration...