We discuss the changing role of the university library, and librarian, and learn how these often iconic institutions are not just responding to change but actively seeking out new opportunities to improve their services and ensure access to valuable information.

Hear about the efforts of US librarians to protect valuable public data and government records from the sudden erasure by the Trump administration. Plus, a UK vice-chancellor describes a pioneering project which saw his university partner with the local council to create a joint library that is open to anyone.

Lynda Kellam is the Snyder-Granader director of research data and digital scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania. She has held previous data librarian roles at Cornell University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She serves as secretary of the International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology (IASSIST) and is a past president of the Government Documents Round Table (GODORT). Independently of her role at Penn, she is a leading figure in the Data Rescue Project, which is coordinating efforts to protect US public data at risk of deletion or mismanagement.

David Green is the vice-chancellor of the University of Worcester. A Cambridge-educated economist with a career-long commitment to education and social equality, he was instrumental in establishing The Hive, which is the only fully integrated university-public library in Europe, in partnership with the Worcestershire County Council. Before joining Worcester in 2003, he held senior academic posts at London South Bank University, Leeds Metropolitan University and the University of West London, and worked as a researcher and consultant in the private sector and for UK homeless campaign SHELTER. In 2019, he was awarded a CBE for his services to higher education. 

You'll find more advice and insight on how university libraries can optimise their services for students, academics and the public in our latest spotlight guide.

A technology transfer expert and biotech spin-out founder explain the steps involved in moving discoveries from the lab to the market.

Most academics want their work to have an impact and one route to achieving this is by commercialising their findings. By partnering with an existing company to bring a product to market or by establishing a new spin-out enterprise, scholars can develop technologies, products and solutions that can revolutionise whole sectors, whether in healthcare, construction, farming and more. But this is a far from easy or simple process requiring tenacity, adaptability, collaboration and high level problem solving.

For this week’s podcast, we speak to two people with extensive experience in what it takes to commercialise research and become an academic entrepreneur.

Mairi Gibbs is CEO of Oxford University Innovation – the university’s technology transfer unit - where she has worked since 2002. With extensive practical experience in partnership management, formation of spinout companies, licensing and patent portfolio management, she explains the initial steps to commercialisation, what investors look for and what can be done at an institutional level to support more spin out activity.

Andrew Hammond is co-founder and head of R&D at Biocentis – an Imperial College London spin out founded in 2022. With a background in molecular biology, Andrew’s 10-year academic career at both Imperial and Johns Hopkins University involved advancing gene editing technology for use in insects. The resulted in the development of gene drive technology designed for use on malaria mosquitos and the later development of Biocentis.

For more advice and insight on this topic, read our spotlight guide on how to work well with industry. 

As complex organisations, universities need to examine their many and varied functions when seeking to reduce their carbon footprint and advance sustainability.

For many, the easier changes have been made so, looking ahead, institutions need to get smarter about how they transform their practices and policies to halt future global warming.

In this episode, we speak to two women focused upon driving positive change and reducing emissions in two very different but equally important arenas of university work.

Ellen Quigley is principal research associate at the University of Cambridge. She is also co-director of finance for environmental and social systemic change and special adviser in responsible investment to the university’s chief financial officer. Her own award-winning research focuses on the mitigation of climate change and inequality through the investment policies and practices of institutional investors. Drawing on the example of Jesus College, Cambridge, she explains how universities can use their power as investors to influence and press for environmental change across multiple sectors – and work against funding for fossil fuel extraction.

Jenna Lowe is the laboratory sustainability officer at the University of Liverpool. She manages the university’s Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) and is a member of the sustainability team. She was shortlisted in the Outstanding Technician of the Year category in the 2024 THE Awards. She discusses how seemingly small adaptations in lab practices can have a huge impact in reducing emissions and waste.

You can find more advice and insight on how universities can work towards achieving net zero in our latest spotlight guide here: Higher education’s bumpy road to net zero | THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect

A sense of belonging is particularly valuable in higher education, where feeling valued, respected and part of a community are connected to students’ academic achievement, retention and well-being. But belonging resists clear definition, both what it is and how it relates to other concepts such as inclusion and mattering. This is especially true in a post-pandemic world, where online learning and the digital transformation have blurred the boundaries of university life.

For this episode of the Campus podcast, we speak to Karen Gravett, who is an associate professor in higher education and associate head of research in the Surrey Institute of Education at the University of Surrey. Her research covers belonging, digital education, student engagement, relational pedagogies and literacy practices. As part of the Belonging to and beyond the Digital university project, Karen (working with Rola Ajjawi of Deakin University and Sarah O’Shea from Charles Sturt University) asked students what belonging means to them, and in this conversation she shares insights into post-Covid student life and why elements such as curation, safety, non-belonging and connection to an academic discipline are powerful drivers of belonging.

You'll find more advice and insight on how to build belonging at your higher education institution in our latest spotlight guide.

Hear from two academic policy experts, one in the UK and one in the US, who discuss the most effective ways that researchers can share their expertise with politicians and civil servants.

We speak to:

Michael Sanders is a professor of public policy at Kings College London and director of the School for Government. In addition to his academic career, he has worked in government as chief scientist on the Behavioural Insights Team and was the founding chief executive of What Works for Children’s Social Care.

David Garcia is a professor with Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Prior to joining ASU, he helped found the Arizona Center for Public Policy - ThinkAZ, and he was worked as an associate superintendent and a director of research and policy with Arizona Department of Education. He is also a former legislative staffer with the Arizona State Senate and was the 2018 Democratic candidate for governor of Arizona.

For more advice and insight on how best to engage policymakers with your research, take a look at our latest spotlight: An academics' guide to policy impact.

Hear why an international approach to higher education research and teaching is vital to building a better future and solving global challenges.

We speak to two academic experts to learn about effective institutional strategies to support internationalisation but also what key barriers prevent a more global academy.

Lily Kong is president of Singapore Management University. She is the first women to lead an institute of higher education in Singapore. She took the helm in 2019 after three years as provost, and prior to this she held senior management roles at the National University of Singapore.

Manuel Barcia is the University of Bath’s pro vice-chancellor (global) after moving from the University of Leeds in May 2025, where he was dean for global engagement and chair of global history in the School of History.

For more advice and insight on this topic, browse our spotlight guide to teaching and researching across borders.

For this episode, we asked academics and university staff from around the world to share their own strategies for staying positive, healthy and maintaining balance in a sector in which stress and overwork are commonplace. At a time when higher education feels under attack in many countries, in more ways than one, it is important for those working in the sector to find coping strategies that work for them and build collective support.

Thank you to all who contributed their personal wisdom:

For more insight and advice on protecting the well-being of those working and studying in universities, take a look at our latest spotlight guide on making mental health a priority in higher education.

The delivery of quality research is central to the mission of most universities. But there is more to research excellence than headline-grabbing “ground-breaking” discoveries.

This podcast episode explores what good research looks like, how it can be supported at an institutional level, and what feeds into a healthy research ecosystem that enables robust studies of all types, at all stages to be carried out and knowledge advanced.

We also delve into research security to find out how such scholarly work can be protected from misuse or being weaponised amid ever-changing geopolitical power struggles.

You will hear from:

For more advice on this topic, check out our resources offering insight on delivering top quality research, including a spotlight collection on how to demonstrate research excellence.

Assessment is a cornerstone of most modern education systems, and yet is it strictly necessary? If it is, what purpose should it serve and, thus, how should it be designed and delivered?

In seeking to answer these questions, we put assessment under examination. In this podcast episode, the nature of institutionalised education, how assessment can better serve learning, the impact of grading, and compliance all come under scrutiny.

We speak to:

Susan D. Blum is a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. An award-winning author and educator, she has written and edited 10 books including a trilogy critiquing the way university teaching is delivered with the latest, Schoolishness: Alienated Education and the Quest for Authentic, Joyful Learning, coming out in 2024.

Catherine Wehlburg is president of Athens State University and president of the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AALHE).

Josh Eyler is director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and clinical assistant professor of teacher education at the University of Mississippi. He has written highly regarded books on the science of learning with his latest, Failing our Future: How Grades Harm Students and What We Can Do about It, published in 2024.

More insight on assessment in higher education can be found in these Campus spotlight guides: 

Complex problems cannot be solved if examined only through a narrow lens. Enter interdisciplinarity. It is now widely accepted that drawing on varied expertise and perspectives is the only way we can understand and tackle many of the most challenging issues we face, as individuals and as a species.

So, there is a growing movement towards more cross-disciplinary working in higher education, but it faces challenges. Interdisciplinarity requires a shift of mindset in an academy built upon clear disciplinary distinctions and must compete for space in already overcrowded curricula.

For this episode, we speak to Gabriele Bammer and Kate Crawford to find out why interdisciplinary research and teaching are so important and how these leading scholars are encouraging more academics and students to break out of traditional academic silos.

Gabriele Bammer is a professor of integration and implementation sciences (i2S) at the Australian National University. She is author of several books including ‘Disciplining Interdisciplinarity’ and is inaugural president of the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity. To support progress in interdisciplinarity around the world, she runs the Integration and Implementation Insights blog and repository of theory, methods and tools underpinning i2S. Gabriele has held visiting appointments at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center at the University of Maryland and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany.

Kate Crawford is an international scholar of the social implications of artificial intelligence who has advised policymakers in the United Nations, the White House, and the European Parliament on AI, and currently leads the Knowing Machines Project, an international research collaboration that investigates the foundations of machine learning. She is a research professor at USC Annenberg in Los Angeles, a senior principal researcher at MSR in New York, an honorary professor at the University of Sydney, and the inaugural visiting chair for AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her award-winning book, Atlas of AI, reveals the extractive nature of this technology while her creative collaborations such as Anatomy of an AI System with Vladan Joler and Excavating AI with Trevor Paglen explore the complex processes behind each human-AI interaction, showing the material and human costs. Her latest exhibition, Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power 1500-2025, opened in Milan, November 2023 and won the Grand Prize of the European Commission for art and technology.

More advice and insight can be found in our latest Campus spotlight guide: A focus on interdisciplinarity in teaching.