The university of the future and lecturer identity

Abstract

This keynote address builds on several papers I have written concerning ‘the university of the future’. An initial blog for the Higher Education Academy (Moon, 2017) entitled, 95 theses for reforming Higher Education. Are HEI’s catalysts for a sustainable society?, set the scene and provided the stimulus for considering how the collective identity of the university has changed since inception and still presents tensions and challenges today. Subsequent papers published by Moon (2019, 2021) build on this foundation to present an argument that societal ‘impact’ can be used to cut through the tensions in a way that galvanises staffs and students around common themes and values such as identified with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). In this keynote address I regard lecturer identity as a dynamic process which is influenced by the above tensions and challenges, and further explore how societal Impact can be used to build lecturer identity including examples from my own pedagogic practice.