Reimagining academic citizenship: Challenges, prospects, and responsibilities

The notion of academic citizenship is intertwined with values: the values that guide our actions as colleagues within the university and as educators, experts, critics, problem-solvers, and creators of projects that promise constructive and beneficial outcomes to culture and society at large. With this special issue, we aim to create a collection of thought-provoking essays about how these complexities shape contemporary academia and academics,as well as how academic practices themselves are constitutive of the complex dynamics and expectations academics face. This implies many additional questions, such as who qualifies as an academic citizen, what society one is a citizen of, and how the notions of “academic”, “society”,and “citizens”relate. Rather than providing definitive answers to any of these questions, the contributions to this special issue engage in an active discussion, approaching the issues at stake from diverse perspectives and contributing new questions to the debate. The essays in this collection are relatively free in format, allowing different voices, styles,and academics from diverse backgrounds to shape the conversations about these issues that are at the core of our everyday working life. Under the aegis of the Danish Network for Educational Development in Higher Education (DUN) and the special interest group (SIG) Higher Education