Theme

Theme 1: In the Interest of the Academy: Perspectives on the Nature, Purpose and Working of the University

Theme 1A: Knowledge Designs

• What constitutes academic knowledge? What are its particularities, its virtues, its limitations?
• Paradigm shifts in knowledge making socially networked knowledge and the ‘wisdom of the crowd’.
• Research methodologies and analytical processes - is academic knowledge more reliable?
• Knowledge systems - peer review, publishing infrastructures, dissemination and access.
• Basic and applied research - changing distinctions.
• Research ethics and applications of research.
• Discipinarity and interdisciplinarity - trends to specialisation or interconnectivity.
• Changing disciplinary distinctions - the sciences, social sciences, humanities, arts, professions.
• Universality and knowledge transfer versus partiality and the localised specificity of knowledge.
• Objectivity and perspectivism in knowledge.
• Knowledge and culture - what kinds of knowledge are literature, art, and identity?
• Public domain or commercialisation - paths to society and market for academic knowledge.
• Intellectual property - forms of ownership and incentives to innovate.

Theme 1B: Learning Designs

• Learning in the University - how does it work? What is distinctive? How is it changing? How should it change?
• Digital technologies in learning.
• Ubiquitous learning - anywhere and anytime, just enough and just in time.
• The role of the University in lifelong and lifewide learning.
• Access and equity in higher education - addressing local, national and global inequalities.
• Addressing learner diversity, and student and faculty mobility.
• Program alternatives - core curriculum or choice.
• Instructional design for higher education.
• Assessment and evaluation of learning.

Theme 1C: Organisational Designs

• Academic governance - the peculiarities of managing the University.
• Academic freedom.
• Resourcing the University - financing higher education.
• Leadership and organizational development in higher education.
• Public and private education.
• Impacts of commercialisation and privatisation.
• Marketing and fundraising.
• Research management and training.
• Assessment of research quality.
• Program and curriculum design.
• Evaluation of teaching.

Theme 1D: Designs on the World

• Collaborations cross-institutional, cross-sectoral and international research programs.
• International education - the University as a global player.
• Community service and outreach.
• The public intellectual in national and international communities.
• Informing the world - connecting with the media, traditional and new.
• Inter-University networks and alliances.
• Private-public partnerships.
• Relationships with governments, corporations and NGOs.
• Educational and research capacity-building.
• Global population movements and the shifting demography of campus.
• Knowledge movements - migration, diasporic networks and brain drain.
• Knowledge societies - securing the strategic centrality for universities in contemporary economic and social agendas.
• Practice orientations - universities in the making of the professions.
• The economics of higher education.
• The economics of research and innovation.
• Research, innovation and education as measures of social progress.

Theme 2: Academic Interests: Setting Intellectual and Practical Agendas

Theme 2A: Sciences

• Disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in the sciences.
• The changing work of scientists.
• Pedagogies for changing sciences.
• Scientific responsibilities - climate change, sustainability and health.
• Science and ethics - sensitive subjects and experimental methods.
• Basic and applied sciences - changing dynamics.
• Applied sciences and social meanings - computer interfaces, design methods and other humanising relationships.

Theme 2B: Technologies

• Technology and human interests.
• The social web and the digital divide.
• Biomedical technologies and their impacts.
• Participatory design.

Theme 2C: Cultures, Identities, Humanisms

• Global society - changing balances of economic and intellectual power.
• Faiths and rationalisms.
• Cultures, civilisations and globalisms.
• Independences and interdependencies of states, societies and cultures.
• Multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism and identity politics.
• Differences - class, locale, race, sex-sexuality-gender, (dis)abilities, culture, language and affinity.
• Cultural production and learning.

Theme 2D: Resources and Welfare

• Social capital.
• Economics and human welfare.
• Inequality and its remedies.
• Trade, fair and free; physical and intellectual properties.
• Development and uneven development.
• Social services and the professions.

Theme 2E: Governance

• Self-managing institutions, from the local to the global.
• Changing patterns of sovereignty.
• Politics and social formation, from the local to the international.
• Human rights.
• Non-government organizations.
• Regulation and deregulation of knowledge regimes and professions.
• Intellectual property laws and knowledge systems