Academic citizenship underpins the day-to-day functioning and long-term sustainability of universities, as well as supporting organizational learning, ensuring universities can continue to make a relevant contribution to changing needs in society. It helps strengthen connections between universities and the world beyond academia.

The pandemic and new developments in the digital space have had a transformative effect on the higher education landscape, making it necessary to revisit discussion about academic citizenship, explore the extent to which it continues to act as the glue that holds institutions together, and consider which elements should be reintroduced or strengthened to encourage collaboration and partnership.

Re-envisioning Academic Citizenship examines the concept and importance of citizenship through several different and ever evolving lenses, offering guidelines for universities to develop definitions that resonate with their own mission and the specificities of their own context. These guidelines offer support to colleagues in managerial roles to develop academic career framework policy documents; to implement career progression policies which benefit individuals and institutions in equitable measure; and to design initiatives that incentivize and support citizenship behaviours and meaningful partnership and collaboration. Simultaneously, the insights will help academics, at all career stages, understand how to enact citizenship for wider benefit.

This ground-breaking piece of scholarship not only builds on a mass of past research but also considers what academic citizenship means for new areas, including AI, while providing wholly fresh insights of its own. The book is never dry, it is always clear and it is likely to prove very thought provoking to everyone who reads it.

As universities across so many countries face mounting questions about their purpose, their value and their role in society, and as too many university sectors face public funding reductions, this rich exploration of academic citizenship, collegiality and service could not be more timely or more important. It is heartening to see that so many universities are re-discovering and re-focussing on their core mission: to deliver public good and help make the world a better place. This is something as a global higher education community we all need to share, showcase and celebrate.

Mark Sterling is Professor (Civil Engineering) and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

Lia Blaj-Ward is Associate Professor (Academic Literacies) at Nottingham Trent University, UK