Presentation Schedule
Exploring How Academics with Practitioner Experience Navigate Research Culture Within Higher Education (104636)
This presentation will be live-streamed via Zoom (Online Access)
Monday, 13 July 2026 13:20
Session: Session 2
Room: Live-Stream Room 2
Presentation Type:Live-Stream Presentation
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The literature notes how those with dual experience of practice and academia, or pracademics (Volpe and Chandler, 1999) can complement a diverse faculty (Dickinson and Griffiths, 2023) by transgressing boundaries, serving as network brokers between academia and industry, and enhancing communication and cooperation across the academic-practitioner divide (Powell et al., 2018, Panda, 2014). Framed by the intensity of the HE research agenda, this paper reports on findings from a project funded by The British Academy/Leverhulme that explores how pracademics renegotiate their professional identities as they navigate the HE research culture.
The researchers purposively sampled post-1992 institutions (which have been granted university status through the Further and Higher Education Act 1992) given the likelihood of them employing a significant number of pracademics (Obembe, 2023) and developing their research agenda alongside their teaching offer (Perkmann and Walsh, 2007; Guthrie and Neumann, 2007).
The paper reports on data collected via a national survey and follow up focus groups that drew on the creative research method of using artefacts (see, for example, Dickinson and Griffiths, 2023). The researchers anticipate that the findings will be relevant to a broad range of stakeholders, including: policymakers, HE-related charities, senior university leadership, human resources and organisational development, research development, those who self-identify as pracademics, and those who have taken more traditional career paths. Through the paper, they make recommendations for how stakeholders can encourage and support pracademics’ engagement with the research of HE.
Authors:
Jill Dickinson, Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom
Monika Foster, Northumbria University, United Kingdom
Debbie Rigby, Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom
About the Presenter(s)
Jill Dickinson is Professor of Law and Professional Development at Leeds Law School.
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