Kristin Ewins

About Kristin Ewins

I am Associate Professor of English and, since 2013, Director of the Centre for Academic Development at Örebro University. As a researcher, teacher and leader, I am interested in how collegiality and deliberative processes can contribute to higher education as and for public good. I work nationally with these issues as part of the board of the Swedish Network for Educational Development in Higher Education (Swednet) since 2021 and as a steering group member for the Academic Development Leader Network which I co-founded in 2019.

Since 2021, I am co-leader, together with Molly Sutphen, for the international research project Academic Hospitality in Interdisciplinary Education, funded by the Norwegian Research Council 2021–2025. The project builds on results from a previous project, Formation and Competence Building of University Academic Developers, of which I was a part from the start in 2015 to the end of the project in 2020. This project was led by Tone Dyrdal Solbrekke, who is now a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Academic Development at Örebro, and resulted in the edited collection Leading Higher Education As and For Public Good: Rekindling Education as Praxis (ed. by Solbrekke and Sugrue, Routledge, 2020). Much of our research lies close to our practice and I feel exceedingly proud to be leading a group of colleagues who embody values associated with innovation, collegiality and professional responsibility.

As a teacher, I convene the course Supervising PhD students, and one of the most enjoyable and enriching aspects of my job is the opportunity to meet with colleagues from different academic cultures and subject traditions. My previous experiences as a lecturer at Salford University, and before that as a visiting lecturer and tutor at Goldsmiths College London and at various colleges within the University of Oxford, have been deeply formative for my professional role today.

My research path began with a doctoral degree in English at the University of Oxford in 2009, with a thesis on British women writers of the 1930s and the relationship between their writing and political engagement. My earliest publications are in the field of literature and politics, and I spent seven years as an editor of the peer-reviewed journal Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism. In 2016–2019 I was also chair of the Raymond Williams Society. Another early research interest is periodical studies, and together with colleagues from the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, I built up the research network European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit) from its inception in 2009 to an organisation that now spans the whole of Europe and beyond. As part of ESPRit's board, I co-founded the peer-reviewed Journal of European Periodical Studies (JEPS) in 2016 and was one of its editors until 2021. Since 2018, I am the chair of ESPRit.

What I most enjoy about my job is working with strategic academic development in all sorts of different forms and contexts. It is a privilege to have such wonderful conditions for doing just that. I also have the pleasure of working nationally with colleagues within Swednet as convenor of Strategic Academic Development, a course for experienced academic developers at Swedish universities.