Professors of tomorrow
by John Craig
I have a comment piece in the Guardian today making the claim that a new breed of academics are taking universities back to the future. This is the idea that, while their institutions remain remorselessly inward-looking, individual researchers are getting much better at building relationships beyond the walls of the academy. As they connect with commercial, political and neighbourhood life they are reviving images of the academic as the travelling intellectual and university chairs as that to which they retire rather than aspire. In something of a first for Demos, here the rhetoric is in danger of running ahead of the research - I am working hard to develop a research project around this theme, with which all help would be gratefully received.