Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures has been published and will be formally launched next week – please see details below. The book, edited by Laura Czerniewicz and myself, has been published openly (with a CC BY-NC license) by Open Book Publishers. This means that the book is free to access and to download via the publisher’s website, though you can also opt to purchase a hard copy – or ask your local library to purchase one.
Higher Education for Good (#HE4Good) is a rich and diverse collection of 27 chapters authored by academics and professionals from 17 countries and many disciplines. It acknowledges the acute crises of recent years and seeks to address how we can build better futures for higher education. As editors, we invited contributors from a wide range of HE contexts to choose their own styles and formats to address these challenging questions. As such, contributions include theory-based chapters, essays, poetry, dialogues, speculative fiction, as well as new and invited artwork that speaks to the book’s overall themes.
Collectively, as #HE4Good editors, authors and artists, we believe that Higher Education for Good offers critique, hope, and purpose for the practice and the trajectory of higher education, and hope that it will contribute to necessary critical conversations. In that vein, we are hosting a series of book launches.
Online book launches:
We are collaborating with Equity Unbound to host two online book launches on the 20th and 22nd of November – all are welcome! Please register and come along to the session on the day/time that suits you best. Find the details here.
Galway book launch:
If you are in or near Galway, Ireland, an in-person book launch will be held at the University of Galway on December 11th. All are very welcome – you can register here.
I’ll conclude with words of hope from Laura and me, included in our introductory chapter of the book:
We conclude… with our own understanding of hope, galvanised by the contributors to this book and specific to the work of (re)making higher education for good.
Hope is firmly rooted in the belief that it is never too late.
Hope is practical. It means taking action, being disciplined, making plans.
Hope is impractical. It means dreaming, being undisciplined, being open-ended.
Hope is strengthened when practised in solidarity with others. It means building and strengthening alliances, coalitions, communities.
Hope is contested and contradictory. And yet whatever its form, it is essential.
Without hope, there would be no future worth living.
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Image credits:
Our thanks to George Sfougaras for the artwork ‘Hope’ which graces the book cover. This artwork is also included inside the book (at the start of Section I), along with a note from the artist.
Our thanks also to Niamh McArdle, who designed the image featured at the top of this post, as well as all of the images used in our social media posts sharing Higher Education for Good. Niamh’s artwork ‘The Right to Flourish’ is also included within the book (at the start of Section V), along with a note from the artist.