Why should students on a qualitative humanitarian programme learn data analysis? For LSE's Stuart Gordon the answer isn't employability. It's about seeing how the evidence is made, whose experiences the numbers hide and holding quantitative claims to critical scrutiny blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

How's your squiggly academic career? Alicja Syska on 20 years of building an academic career sideways and why the improvisation that 'scrappers' have always practised may now need to be every academics most urgent skill in a sector in freefall. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

Is there a spiral of silence in your classroom? What's the real cost of cancel culture? Is 'Global South' still fit for purpose? Who sounds like you in academia? Is the essay dead? Five conversation starters for topics to explore this term. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

As the academic year draws to a close, we asked our LSE HE Blog Fellows to consider what has changed in higher education or challenged their thinking - find out, and tell us what changed or challenged YOUR thinking this year? blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

"Half of my prompt file could be summarised in one instruction the model is not built to receive: stop being so nice and helpful!" Read part 2 of opening the AI black box: Savvas Verdis on teaching an AI coach to push back. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

"The prompt file is, in effect, the digital twin of how I teach." Savvas Verdis on why universities should show what's inside their AI learning tools – what they teach, how they push back, what they refuse to do. With video. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

Teaching scholarship moves us from individual concerns to collective significance. Four editors and educators discuss why interviews matter as sites of academic inquiry, why the canon comes first, and how solidarity reshapes what we think about teaching. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

Government threats to defund DEI look like defeat. But view them simply as bad pedagogy: top-down, ineffective, impossible to control, and Ijeoma Njaka finds hope in subversion. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

Western European academia operates "behind a facade of openness and diversity while maintaining exclusionary institutional structures" – and it's full of "sludge", say Tamas Ziegler & Anna Unger in an interview with @michellepauli.bsky.social blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

"SoTL is a field still making itself. Editors make curatorial decisions about what counts, who contributes, which questions matter." Alicja Syska, Daniela Gachago, Lee-Ann Sequeira on curation vs gatekeeping, developmental reviewing&cross-fertilisation with teaching🎧 blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

Seven years of sparking dialogue 🎂 Lee-Ann Sequeira and Michelle Pauli mark the LSE HE Blog's anniversary by picking 5 posts that made them stop and think: AI ethics, accent discrimination, merger culture, playfulness as radical pedagogy, measuring academic freedom. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

What if you taught ethnography through theatre? Cristiana Giordano & Greg Pierotti developed "affect theatre" - students collaborate to build performances from research, learning to feel the connection between experience & scholarly representation. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

In a post-truth world, how do you teach students to separate fact from belief? Jake Wright explores naïve scepticism in first-year philosophy: the danger when students think there are no answers because philosophy deals with beliefs. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

"Open questions can be frustrating." But in disability studies pedagogy, they're invitations for reflection that lead to concrete practice changes. Miro Griffiths on teaching with resistance, interdependence, and persistent questioning. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

"The real risk is not that students will use AI; but that educators continue to grade outputs AI can generate while pretending they still certify human competence" – Ignacio Aravena Gonzalez on redesigning assessment: grade the audit, not the artefact blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

"The only way you say goodbye to the old institution is if there's a lived story of the new institution that people buy into." Elisabeth Hill, Chris Husbands & Huw Morris on university mergers: why strategy must trump short-term panic and culture work takes decades 🎧 blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

"There's no chance in hell for anyone who actually sounds like Stormzy making it in academia." Aymen Idris on UK HE's sonic straitjacket: why an RP accent remains the unofficial entry fee & code-switching is exhausting, unacknowledged labour. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

The education development centre dilemma: focus on scholarship and be asked "what are you doing to improve teaching?" Focus on practice and risk being dismissed as admin rather than academic partners. Claire Gordon & Sam Smidt offer a solution to the identity crisis. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

Research funding is being restructured.. Students now work 13+ hours a week and live at home. The traditional university model won't survive. Yet most institutions plan as if minor adjustments will suffice. They won't, says Huw Morris blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

Are academics complicit in authoritarian encroachment? There are three myths about scholarly life under autocratic pressure that academics use to let themselves off the hook, writes Tamas Ziegler blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

Creating an environment for open dialogue in higher education has never been more challenging – or more essential. These five posts explore how educators create space for difficult conversations and conflicting perspectives. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

For our last post of the year, academics from across the world reflect on the top HE stories in 2025. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat... Comment below to share your 2025 HE picks! ⭐️

HE wrapped for 2025 - LSE Higher Education

From AI to play, academics from around the world choose the higher education stories that stood out for them in 2025 The creative scar left by GenAI The most thought-provoking story for me in 2025 is ...

blogs.lse.ac.uk

Must classrooms always be boring? Listen to our latest podcast, hosted by LSE HE Blog Fellow Ijeoma Njaka, and hear from three academics who are doing things differently, from taking a writing class onto a basketball court to filling seminar rooms with works of art blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

With the news that Nottingham is just the latest uni to close music courses, @thomasgraves.bsky.social explores why music degrees seem to be such an easy target for the axe - and why that's a tragedy blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

In the third and final segment of his interview, LSE President and Vice-Chancellor Larry Kramer explains the optics of protest on campus and how it might be viewed by alumni, donors, and the government — “… nothing about that is more or less ‘British’.” blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

“Self-expression shouldn’t become more important than human relationships,” says LSE President & Vice-Chancellor Larry Kramer. He argues that teaching constructive disagreement helps students express themselves and respect others. Read Part 2 of the interview: blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

No making statements, no taking sides. Larry Kramer, President and Vice-Chancellor of the LSE, advocates for thoughtful debate and explains why he'll never condemn lawful speech in the first of a three-part interview with the LSE Higher Education Blog. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

Larry Kramer on how to disagree well [1:04]

YouTube video by LSE Eden Centre

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“Rather than only teaching content that challenges dominant perspectives,” @moesz.bsky.social feels the role of the teacher is to engage with a range of perspectives that emerge in the classroom. Read her full blogpost: blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat... What do you think the role of the teacher is?

Are the students in your classroom as free to speak as you think they are? Chen-Ta Sung explores the paradox of diverse classrooms inhibiting diverse viewpoints, resulting in a spiral of silence - for educators as well as students. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

Today's complex challenges call out for interdisciplinary thinking - and such courses are growing in popularity. But great interdisciplinary teaching is about much more than adding disciplines and stirring, says LSE100 co-director Jillian Terry blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...