CHER 2013, Lausanne

The 2013 annual conference of the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER) was held in Lausanne, Switzerland from September 9-11. The preconference workshop of the Early Career Higher Education Researchers network (ECHER) kicked-off the event and was organised by Dr Yurgos Politis, Postdoctoral Researcher in HERC and co-organiser of a previous EuroHESC/ECHER colloquium in Dublin entitled “Higher Education and Society: Implications and effects” that was funded by the European Science Foundation on the theme. Manja Klemenčič,the incoming editor of the European Journal of Higher Education, gave a talk entitled “How to get published in journals and tips on improving your academic writing”. She provided valuable insights into the process of getting published and encouraged the participants to make their academic writing more interesting, engaging and concise, recommending a book by Helen Sword, Stylish Academic Writing. There was ample time to discuss general ideas and concerns with her, such as working on collaborative papers, self-citations, how much to use quotations in qualitative articles, getting feedback, recognizing when a paper is ready to be submitted to a journal, reasons for rejection, and the importance of a good title.

The main CHER conference began on Monday morning. The theme of this year’s conference was The Roles of Higher Education and Research in the Fabric of Societies. The theme provided a basis on which to branch out into a number of more traditional research questions around Higher Education and Research: the mission of the university, the complexificaton of the HER systems, the academic profession, the identity and differentiation of HEIs, student access, and the role of
disciplines. It also enabled territories to enter the discussion, and this field was given prominent placement as one of the four tracks. It emphasized both regional issues and innovation, seeing territory as a physical geography, but also opened up alternative meanings with papers that examined networks as a form of territory and de-territorialization in terms of mobility. The academic profession and workplace was also a popular sub-theme of relevance to the HERC project on the Voices of Irish Academics.

Congratulations to Professor Patrick Clancy, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, UCD on his election as Chair of CHER. 

The 2014 CHER conference will be held in Rome in early September, with final dates to be announced.