The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics: - Higher Education ...

The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics
reinvention of the university to which he aspires. Mike was very helpful in
facilitating the development of our work and in helping us to disseminate
our findings, and we are delighted that he has contributed a preface to this
volume. Glynis Cousin and Alan Jenkins deserve many thanks for advising
and encouraging us and for providing many helpful insights and
suggestions. Pro-Vice Chancellor Michael Whitby at the University of
Warwick was very supportive as chair of the project’s steering committee,
and we benefited greatly from his interest and involvement in the project.
As the project’s external evaluator, Murray Saunders pushed us to think
through our theory of change, although we suspect not to the extent he
would have wished! Given our little previous experience of using
placements, it was very helpful to learn from the work of David Woodman
and his colleagues in the Crucible CETL at Roehampton University, and
Philip Norton (more properly, Professor The Lord Norton of Louth), who
was a pioneer in the area of politics placements and who so generously
shared his knowledge and expertise with us on a number of occasions.
In the UK, John Craig is the central figure in the community of
scholars concerned with teaching and learning issues in the discipline of
politics, and we are very grateful for his help and advice generally. His
work in establishing the Political Studies Association Teaching and
Learning Specialist Group and his involvement in the Higher Education
Academy’s subject centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics (C-SAP)
has been a lynchpin holding this group of scholars together and forging
such a friendly, supportive and welcoming community. John’s contribution
to teaching and learning has been properly acknowledged in 2009 with the
award of both a National Teaching Fellowship and C-SAP’s Recognition
Award. We are very pleased that he contributed the concluding chapter to
this book.
Thanks must also go to our friends and colleagues at C-SAP, not
least for providing us with the opportunity to publish this work, which had
been turned down by the many commercial publishers we initially
approached. We think some of the examples of best practice contained
within these pages will be most helpful and a source of inspiration to fellow
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