ILD Public Lecture - University Challenge: Being a university in an interconnected world

30th Mar 2023 - 30th Nov 2024

Greenwich Campus

ILD Public Lecture

Thursday 30 March 2023, 5.00pm online & HH102, Hamilton House Greenwich Campus

University Challenge: Being a university in an interconnected world

Unusually and wonderfully, culture comes across as a strong theme in how the University of Greenwich understands itself and its responsibilities and how it wishes to project itself to the world. In his talk, Professor Barnett will especially dwell on this matter of culture as an illustration of the larger set of concerns here, as to what it is to be a university in an interconnected world.

Once we start to position the university – any university – in a world that is radically interconnected, a multitude of themes and concepts immediately appear. Alongside culture, these include complexity, conflict, indeterminacy, entanglement, and unpredictability. The world is not just in motion but is totally destabilised. Moreover, the university is beset not just with complex systems – at the institutional, national, and global levels – but with clashes of ideologies. Further still – consider the COVID crisis - while the natural world can affect our ideas, our ideas can also affect the natural world. (Culture, by the way, straddles all these worlds, of ideas, the natural world, human beings, and ideologies.)

What, then, is it to be a university in a world in conflicted and interconnected, and total motion? Are there any secure foundations for it? Can the link between ‘university’ and ‘universal’ be sustained anymore or is it to be a free-for-all, with each university making up its way in the world for itself and by itself? Prof Barnett cautions against such a view and shall hold out for there being universal responsibilities that befall each university. After all, there is only one planet Earth.

Professor Ronald Barnett, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education and Consultant Hon Doctorate (Univ of Eastern Europe), DLitt, PhD, MPhil, BA, PGCE, DipEd, FAcSS, FSRHE, FHEA

Ronald Barnett is an Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at University College London Institute of Education (where he was both Dean of Professional Development and (subsequently) Pro-Director for Longer Term Strategy). In his academic work, he has been and remains a world leader in developing the new field of the philosophy of higher education, a project set out in his first book, The Idea of Higher Education (1990), and which he has followed over the past 30+ years, with 35+ books.

Barnett’s work influences debate and practice around the world. He has given over 150 keynote talks across 40+ countries and is often sought out to provide advice to universities.

He has advanced a particular conception of the field, that it should be realist, social, critical, and imaginary (as set out in his most recent book, The Philosophy of Higher Education: A Critical Introduction (2022)). He has sought to identify creative concepts and practical principles that might enhance universities and higher education in his work. He has created the concepts of criticality and super complexity and he has advanced the idea of The Ecological University: A Feasible Utopia (2018).

He has written a trilogy of books on comprehending the university, Being a University (2011), Imagining the University (2013), and Understanding the University (2015). His books have been translated into many languages and several have won prizes. He is also the author of over one hundred papers and well over another one hundred pieces of writing. He has been described as ‘one of the most eloquent defenders of the university of reason’ (Michael Peters, 2014) and, in Australia, has been referred to as a ‘rock star’.

Among his awards and honours, he is the inaugural President of the Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education Society, and the inaugural recipient of the EAIR Award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Higher Education Research, Policy and Practice’. He has conferred on him an honorary doctorate (University of Eastern Europe) and an earned higher doctorate from the University of London, together with Fellowships from the Academy of the Social Sciences, the Society for Research into Higher Education, and the Higher Education Academy. He has been made an Honorary Fellow of St Mary’s University, UK, and has been a visiting professor in China and Australia (as well as several in the UK), and a Special Adviser to the UK’s Select Committee Inquiry into Universities and Students.

Ronald Barnett has chaired several major committees, including the Council of the Society for Research into Higher Education and the Research Degrees Committee of the University of London (working across all of its colleges and all of its disciplines). Over recent years, he has been serving on international groups including UNESCO’s.

Ronald Barnett acts as a consultant and has worked with most of the major UK national bodies in higher education, and many universities including several abroad.

For further information please email: ILD@gre.ac.uk

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