Re-envisioning Academic Citizenship

Sterling, Mark ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2119-592X and Blaj-Ward, Lia (2025) Re-envisioning Academic Citizenship. Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds. ISBN 9781836083610 (Print) ; 9781836083580 (Online) ; 9781836083603 (Epub)

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Abstract

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.