Dr Frank Su’s latest book ‘Cosmopolitan Perspectives on Academic Leadership in Higher Education’ (edited with Dr Margaret Wood) has been published by Bloomsbury. This book explores what academic leadership in higher education might mean in the cosmopolitan and increasingly globalised 21st century through individual academics’ narrative accounts drawn from a range of international contexts. The book shows that academic leadership is key to an individual’s development and that it could mean different things in different settings as acade
mics operate across the levels of professional practice, institutional organisation, sector-wide systems and international networks.
This book argues for the importance of cosmopolitan perspectives on academic leadership which are developed from the particularities of local and everyday situated experience. Part I of the book explores key theoretical perspectives; Part II provides first-hand accounts from the contributors of their own development as academic leaders; and Part III discusses some of the implications for those with responsibility for academic development and for all those concerned with developing the qualities necessary for leadership practices.
Commenting on the book, Michael W. Apple, John Bascom Professor of Education at University of Wisconsin, USA, states that ‘In a time when corporate agendas and approaches to leadership are becoming the new common-sense in higher education, we definitely need the voices of alternatives. Cosmopolitan Perspectives on Academic Leadership in Higher Education gives voice to the spaces where these more ethically and socially committed alternatives can and will grow’.
For more details see the book on the Bloomsbury website.