Professors as academic leaders: Expectations, enacted professionalism and evolving roles

What is the role of a professor? How does someone achieve professorial status? What do non-professorial colleagues think about professors? How do professors themselves perceive their roles? What are the bases of these perceptions, and what are their implications for the professoriate’s evolving role both within the neoliberal university, and in the approaching post-neoliberal era?

Professors as Academic Leaders draws on a wealth of data not only to explore what it is to be a (full) professor in the UK but also to consider how professors are perceived by others. Linda Evans presents the findings from four studies, with a combined data base of questionnaire responses from over 2,400 participants and over 90 interview transcripts, and discusses their implications for the future development of the UK-based professoriate and academic leadership in higher education. She analyses the concepts of leadership and of professionalism, and illustrates how, in trying to meet people’s expectations of them, professors’ ‘enacted’ professionalism is shaped by the professionalism that others demand of them. Professorship is revealed to be demanding, at times stressful and morale-sapping, and at times exhilarating and rewarding. Linda Evans questions whether universities are making best use of their most senior academics, and proposes ways of refashioning professorship.