diversity Archives

Critical Perspectives on Academic Writing

Critical Perspectives on Academic Writing offers a timely, theoretically grounded examination of the often marginalised yet foundational role of academic writing in UK higher education. Based on the UCL Institute of Education’s Academic Writing Seminar Series, the volume brings together leading researchers and practitioners to interrogate the contested politics, practices, and pedagogies of academic writing development. Against the backdrop of internationalisation, widening participation, neoliberalisation, and the rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence in higher education, the contributors consider how we value academic writing and how we support student writing development.

The first part of the book frames the choices we make when working with writing or with developing writers as inherently political rather than neutral. The second focuses on the implications of generative AI for student academic writing; and the third situates research on academic writing and literacies in the practices of learning and teaching. By examining the roles of writing specialists, subject lecturers, and institutional policy, the book highlights both challenges and possibilities for change. It combines critical insights with practical approaches to writing pedagogy, offering an essential resource for educators, researchers and policymakers seeking to rethink the place of writing in the modern university.

Inclusion, Diversity and Innovation in Translation Education

Through examples of literary and audiovisual translation teaching practices, Inclusion, Diversity and Innovation in Translation Education places a novel emphasis on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) synergising the latest research advancements in EDI and translation curricula.

The contributors revisit how languages and translation are currently taught and explore the relevance of EDI values from an interdisciplinary perspective. The chapters contain proposals of best teaching practices and teacher training guidance alongside examples of research-led teaching scenarios. There is a twofold rationale behind this volume: firstly, identifying links between literary and audiovisual translation teaching practices, which often demand great creativity inside and outside the classroom; and, secondly, placing greater emphasis on EDI-focused methods and themes. Following this approach, readers are invited to consider pressing societal issues such as (media) accessibility, intersectionality, LGBTQI+ and race, among others, and to embed them in their language and translation teaching practices.

Urban Childhoods

Growing up in English inner cities today is a distinctive experience: deprivation and poverty are intense, while social and cultural diversity enriches everyday life. Urban Childhoods puts children’s and families’ voices centre stage while investigating ways of bringing children’s wellbeing to the fore in planning for urban life today and tomorrow.

Children’s wellbeing starts from what children themselves find important: reliable relationships, plenty to do, especially outdoors, and having a say in their lives. Organised around three main themes of place, provisioning and infrastructure, the book brings together key concepts from critical childhood studies, urban studies and public health to argue that, used together, these approaches offer a dynamic framework for considering urban childhood. Chapters are linked to a major prevention programme that ran between 2019 and 2025 in the northern city of Bradford and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. They investigate spaces to play outdoors, reclaiming school streets, child poverty, economic support for child wellbeing via families, and provision for under threes. A number of strategies also feature, including support for mothers’ mental health, resolving overcrowding, involving children in making better school food, and increasing community participation in co-creating health and wellbeing. Each chapter has sections on inequality of experience, voices of children, families and professionals who work with them, and hopeful courses of action, including potential policy actions. The whole builds into a blueprint for an urgently needed thriving urban childhood.

Towards a Global Core Value System in Doctoral Education

Recent decades have seen an explosion in doctoral education worldwide. Increased potential for diverse employment has generated greater interest, with cultural, political and environmental tensions focusing the attention of new creative, responsible scholars.

Towards a Global Core Value System in Doctoral Education provides an evaluation of changes and reforms in doctoral education since 2000. Recognising the diversity of academic cultures and institutional systems worldwide, the book advocates for a core value system to overcome inequalities in access to doctoral education and the provision of knowledge. Building on in-depth perspectives of scholars and young researchers from more than 25 countries, the chapters focus on the structures and quality assurance models of doctoral education, supervision, and funding from an institutional and comparative perspective. The book examines capacity building in the era of globalisation, global labour market developments for doctoral graduates, and explores the ethical challenges and political contestations that may manifest in the process of pursuing a PhD.

Experts and early career researchers in the Global North and South collaborated in interdisciplinary and intergenerational teams to develop guidelines for doctoral education. They learned from each other about how to act courageously within a complex global context. The resulting recommendations and reflections are an invitation to reflect on the frames and conditions of doctoral education today.

Developing the Higher Education Curriculum

A complementary volume to Dilly Fung’s A Connected Curriculum for Higher Education (2017), this book explores ‘research-based education’ as applied in practice within the higher education sector. A collection of 15 chapters followed by illustrative vignettes, it showcases approaches to engaging students actively with research and enquiry across disciplines. It begins with one institution’s creative approach to research-based education – UCL’s Connected Curriculum, a conceptual framework for integrating research-based education into all taught programmes of study – and branches out to show how aspects of the framework can apply to practice across a variety of institutions in a range of national settings.

The 15 chapters are provided by a diverse range of authors who all explore research-based education in their own way. Some chapters are firmly based in a subject-discipline – including art history, biochemistry, education, engineering, fashion and design, healthcare, and veterinary sciences – while others reach across geopolitical regions, such as Australia, Canada, China, England, Scotland and South Africa. The final chapter offers 12 short vignettes of practice to highlight how engaging students with research and enquiry can enrich their learning experiences, preparing them not only for more advanced academic learning, but also for professional roles in complex, rapidly changing social contexts.

A Connected Curriculum for Higher Education

Is it possible to bring university research and student education into a more connected, more symbiotic relationship? If so, can we develop programmes of study that enable faculty, students and ‘real world’ communities to connect in new ways? In this accessible book, Dilly Fung argues that it is not only possible but also potentially transformational to develop new forms of research-based education. Presenting the Connected Curriculum framework already adopted by UCL, she opens windows onto new initiatives related to, for example, research-based education, internationalisation, the global classroom, interdisciplinarity and public engagement.

A Connected Curriculum for Higher Education is, however, not just about developing engaging programmes of study. Drawing on the field of philosophical hermeneutics, Fung argues how the Connected Curriculum framework can help to create spaces for critical dialogue about educational values, both within and across existing research groups, teaching departments and learning communities. Drawing on vignettes of practice from around the world, she argues that developing the synergies between research and education can empower faculty members and students from all backgrounds to contribute to the global common good.