University research is of central political, cultural and economic importance for nations and is currently the subject of considerable debate and discussion in universities worldwide. Research has become highly competitive though scarce resources. In recent years, research policies and strategies at different levels have called into question researcher autonomy, problematised academic freedom, created new disciplinary hierarchies, skewed publication rates and processes, created powerful ways to measure research outputs and demanded new working habits.

This book is concerned with how individual researchers experience and respond to this scenario. It brings together research and scholarship examining the socio-political context of university research and explores how researchers' perceptions and identities are changed by political and cultural agendas for research.

The book brings together the work of leading international scholars from different countries who have investigated theoretically and empirically the nature of research, research cultures and academic researcher identities. It brings together work that has hitherto only been reported in isolated and esoteric contexts internationally, thus consolidating the nature of research as an important field of study in its own right and providing important new understandings of how research is experienced in universities. A range of different theoretical positions taken by different authors is indicative of a lively and robust field of developing knowledge.

Contributors:Dr Gerlese S. Akerlind, Dr Christine Asmar, Professor David Boud, Dr Harry de Boer, Dr Jurgen Enders, Dr Margaret Kiley, Dr Liudvika Leisyte, Professor Alison Lee, Dr Catherine Manathunga, Professor Emeritus Ian McNay, Dr Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Dr Mari Murtonen, Associate Professor Susan Page, Professor Betty Rambur, Professor Sir Peter Scott, Professor Margaret Thornton, Professor Malcolm Tight