LSE HE Blog Fellow Richard Watermeyer talks to four professors about the state of the professoriate in the UK and internationally
What’s it like to be a senior academic and more specifically a (full) professor at a time of acute anxiety, turbulence and precarity for the higher education sector? In this podcast, I have the privilege of talking with four field-leading academics – Cassie Sugimoto and Mary P Sheridan in the US, Kalpana Shankar in Ireland, and Gemma Derrick in the UK – to get under the skin of their various experiences of working in an age of ‘permacrisis’. Our conversation explores the manifold challenges and responsibilities they face as professors and how they mediate these; what they value most (and cherish) about being a professor; and whether they think the job of being a professor is fit for purpose, under threat or, even, continues to matter.
Guests
Kalpana Shankar, Professor of Information and Communication Studies, University College, Dublin, Ireland
Mary P Sheridan, Professor of English and Director of the Commonwealth Center for Humanities and society, University of Louisville, USA
Cassie Sugimoto, Professor and Chair of the School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Gemma Derrick, Professor of Research Policy and Culture, University of Bristol, UK
In this podcast we discuss (timings might vary by a few seconds depending on device/browser):
01:55: What is the core job of the professor and how would you characterise the role of the professor today?
03:28: Do professors fit easily into universities?
10:26: What challenges are you facing within your institutional context and externally?
14:38: Is AI going to take over?
16:12: Are professors too eager to chase the big bucks, performance evaluation and performance management?
22:58: Do professors in the UK have the infrastructure and the resources to have a purposeful, profitable professoriate?
27:10: What motivates you?
31:08: Is there a significant weight of responsibility resting on the shoulders of the professoriate if they are the apotheosis of the intelligentsia?
36:52: Is the professoriate fit for purpose?
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This post is opinion-based and does not reflect the views of the London School of Economics and Political Science or any of its constituent departments and divisions.
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Main image: Photographic Agency of Musée Rodin – Jérome Manoukian
