Letter from the Editors

Abstract

Dear Colleagues, Welcome to our third issue for 2023, following on from our special issue focused on equity and inclusion policy in higher education. A big thank you to our guest editors Denise Jackson and Ian Li, and all the contributors to that special issue. Our first two articles in this issue offer new theoretical and practical perspectives on (de)colonialism in higher education. Savo Heleta and Samia Chasi reimagine the definition of internationalisation from a decolonial lens, unpacking dominant internationalisation definitions and applying them to contemporary South Africa. Jing, Ghosh and Liu examine how neocolonialism operates in international branch campuses, outlining the careful balance between mimicry of the Western education practices of the home university against local campus needs. There are many policies and interventions that seek to address the underrepresentation of women and ethnic minority groups in the academic workforce. One direct approach taken by The University of Melbourne has been affirmative action. Guillemin, Wong and Such review the implementation and effectiveness of numerical targets in recruitment to redress unequal opportunity for women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), concluding with some important lessons. Inequality in recruitment may also be redressed through better training and awareness of implicit bias. Although these practices are common, there is a lack of evidence for their efficacy. Betsy Lehman and colleagues examine the effects of a mandatory bias literacy program for academic staff at an American public university, concluding that the recency of training and the ability to put training into practice are crucial factors. Academic work has dramatically changed over the past two decades towards more teaching-focused roles, auditing of teaching quality and research outputs, and general ‘hyper-performativity’ pressures. However, understandings of knowledge creation in teaching-focused roles remain underdeveloped. Godbold, Matthews and Gannaway apply a learning-practice conceptual framework, aiming to capture and recognise the complexity of these roles. The academic sabbatical used to be a right for almost all academics, offering a period of rest, recuperation and academic travel. Bruce Macfarlane documents how sabbaticals have undergone a transformation over time and are now a privilege for a minority, narrowly configured towards research outputs. To round out the issue we have two book reviews. We have Riana Tambunan’s review of The right to higher education: a political theory by Christopher Martin. This is followed JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION POLICY AND MANAGEMENT 2023, VOL. 45, NO. 3, 259–260 https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2023.2208456