Professor

Recent cuts and scares have cast doubt on ministers’ commitment to harnessing science in pursuit of a levelled-up, post-Brexit innovation economy. Questions also remain about how funding should be distributed and directed. Jack Grove examines the lessons from history and from overseas

Universities need to establish clear and transparent criteria for assessing those with borderline results, argues Andy Grayson

Chemical weapons expert turned Cambridge don reflects on conspiracy theorists in academia, making safe a 60-tonne bomb with science and breaking the world press-up record

Michael Higgins warns campuses ‘have suffered attrition of range and depth, loss of interdisciplinary exchange, leading in too many cases to a degradation of the very scholarship and teaching for which they were established’

The linguist and author of How We Read Now on the power of reading, what is lost when we rely on digital media, and the future of publishing

Critics argue that The Lancet failed to disclose potential conflict of interest when dismissing the leak theory

Non-disclosure agreements that silence staff or students should be banned, says Mark Geoghegan

Just 10 per cent of academics account for half of all engagement with the media, according to a survey of more than 1,000 Swiss professors

As feared, the country’s universities are being used as a weapon to crush dissent against the regime, several academic organisations say

With history books increasingly including first-person, ‘confessional’ elements, authors explain why they take this approach, while other historians reflect on the dangers

Students would be far better advised to focus on demonstrating their mastery of research skills, says Gordon Message

Prolific cancer researcher Eric Lam has been fired after investigation found evidence of data falsification and manipulation

China-born academics now make up the largest cohort of foreign scholars in Japan, followed by Americans, Koreans and Britons

After yet another minister falls to a plagiarism scandal, observers lament that a long German tradition of doctorates has descended into academic ‘credentialism’

As post-92 departments close, non-traditional students and scholars risk being shut out – again, says Panikos Panayi

Innovative approaches can help students become more empathetic and skilled at decision-making as well as better historians

Wide support for cOAlition S’ rights retention strategy would allow negotiators to take a harder line with publishers, says Alice Gibson 

Expecting academics to effectively review potential cheating incidents is unrealistic and ineffective, says Scott McFarland

Joe Moran appreciates a bold attempt to illuminate the roots of why we are so unhappy

Tributes paid to acclaimed philosopher who always ‘gave of herself for the good of the group’

Her long career as a psychologist and a college president has shown Beverly Daniel Tatum how crucial racial identity formation is and how overriding negative stereotypes about minority students’ performance can be like ‘water in a parched land’. Matthew Reisz hears why

Public confusion is one thing, but some subjects provoke quizzical and sometimes dismissive frowns even among colleagues from different departments. Here, nine academics set the record straight about what they do – and why it matters

Allowing faulty papers to go unchallenged damages integrity and threatens dangerous real-world consequences, says Peter Bowbrick

Alongside the academic edutainer and the policy expert, there should be room for the voice from the wilderness, says Michael Marinetto

A look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Covid wave has revealed a deadly lack of welfare and job security

Scholars who stay at one university tend to take ‘safer’ and ‘less ambitious’ paths

‘Devastation and horror’ compound years of isolation and neglect, professor says

Robert Eaglestone finds much to admire in an unapologetic attempt to justify the humanities in their own terms

Prisoners offer exceptionally honest answers to doctoral student serving with them in a US prison

This week’s Climate Exp0 underlines universities’ potential to make net zero achievable, say Emily Shuckburgh, Roberto Buizza and Alyssa Gilbert

Changes to funding mechanisms can feel like a threat, but Aria will be a blast of fresh air for science and technology, says Tom Stephenson

Universities take sudden U-turns on restrictions, as new Covid waves hit

Online exams are unfair and hard to police, even with creepy levels of invasiveness, says Helen Soteriou  

Collaborative, technically enhanced experiential learning will prepare the continent’s vast young population for the digital future, says Laura Kakon

Roberta Mock explores a tradition of performance that still raises urgent political questions today

Scholars should model the constructive criticism of ideas, not yell ‘you're wrong’ during each other’s talks, says Katy Barnett

Policy should focus more on research’s benefits to a region than on where it is conducted, say Sarah Chaytor, Grace Gottlieb and Graeme Reid

The professor of the history of medicine and author of Broken Dreams on teenage angst, exploring medical pasts and getting to the heart of midlife crises

Faculty must draw on abilities they have developed in the classroom to steer administrators in the right direction, says Karen Spierling

Professor accuses university of ‘aligning itself with a propaganda narrative that is not intellectually defensible’

It was crucial for East Asian universities to put on more courses in English, but now they need to rethink their pedagogy, says Benjamin Tak Yuen Chan

David A. Sanders enjoys a vivid account of the many crafty ways academics steal the words of others

Interdisciplinarity will not meet its problem-solving potential unless graduates are primed to embrace challenges, says Paul O’Keefe

As the David Cameron furore underlines, lobbying is big business, fraught with risk. So why have universities shied away from it, asks Alberto Alemanno

Tributes paid to visionary teacher of architecture who encouraged students to ‘dream wildly’

With some academics being willing to oust those they disagree with, self-censorship is a huge, unacknowledged problem, says James Tooley

Simpler options are imperfect but perhaps no more so than the panels’ unavoidably cursory ‘peer review’ of submissions, says Dorothy Bishop

Be careful about what you give away in your excitement about signing a contract for a book, says Lennard Davis

Our regular look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Winners describe how gossip and gaudy colours, as well as a desire to relieve suffering, spurred their research

Relying on academic research, thinktanks translate findings into the language of politicians and media, EUA president Michael Murphy argues – but not always accurately

Book sets out to challenge the simplistic and divisive thinking to be found in disciplines as diverse as economics and literary studies

Kalwant Bhopal is impressed by a sobering analysis of how racial attitudes shape even our most intimate interactions

Universities should rethink their role as a ‘neutral but powerful force’ in times of crisis, summit hears

Tough choices and bold strategies are needed if universities are to navigate the perilous landscape that lies ahead, argue Michael Braun and Scott Latham

Action is clearly needed to shore up the USS, but the trustee needs to be more flexible, says Alistair Jarvis

Amid demographic decline and geopolitical isolation, island hopes to have more English-language courses

Gabriel Paquette is impressed by an ambitious account of how a continent has kept trying to reinvent itself after major wars

Matthew Flinders finds the solutions offered in an ambitious analysis of American discontent less than impressive