The paper makes a number of arguments about the research interview and maintains that, despite the near ubiquity of the method in higher education research, the interview remains under-theorised and mis-described. We argue that by virtue of being "insider", higher education research involves a form of tacit ethnography where multiple…

This article addresses the problem of how we theorise in writing about higher education through a reconstruction and interrogation of my previous work. I argue that theorising is messy, incomplete and a non-reductive process. Using C. Wright-Mills' notion of craft and Val Hey's insights into theorists who come to haunt us, I retrace the steps…

This paper calls into question the idea that we can simply think about higher education as a research field and explores different meanings of the term field. It asks whether there are related fields: research into higher education, academic development and disciplinary teaching research, rather than one. The approach of the paper is conceptual,…

One of the paradoxes confronting higher education teachers and other staff supporting students is that despite their perception that they offer students opportunities for support, students do not take advantage of them. Our research was based on the desire to understand the ways students cope and what resources they draw on. To this end, we…