Ken Hyland explores the importance of writing in higher education to both academics and students by focusing on the ways it contributes to knowledge, education and the professional careers of academics themselves. He presents aspects of his research to argue that writing is at the heart of academic practice and that we need to understand literacy as a situated activity and not as simply textual and psychological. Seeing writing as embedded in the epistemologies of individual disciplines helps students to conceptualise their subjects and academics to engage their peers and to argue their claims persuasively. Ultimately, and in an important sense, we are what we write, and we need to understand the distinctive ways our disciplines have of identifying issues, asking questions, addressing a literature, criticising colleagues and presenting arguments.