Pracademia: Impacts and Pathways

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Starting from ISTR webinars held in 2022, over some eighteen months the Pracademic Development Initiative (PDI), has become a multi-country effort to address longstanding limitations in academia that reduce pracademia’s contribution to effective development practice. Rather than concentrating on research as a frequent way to combine academic scholarship and practice, the PDI intends to work in four areas: promoting pracademia as a career path; deepening understanding of the value-added of pracademia; mobilising resources for undertaking the develop of pracademics; and building a pracademic community.

Located in “Other Third Sector related topics”, pracademia is a phenomenon cutting across themes found in Third Sector scholarship. To fully explore what this means, this panel forms one type of three contributions to the ISTR 2024 conference. Diverse formats - a fish bowl, a roundtable and a panel – will cover an interconnected trio of topics. Together they take forward positive responses to a forthcoming double special issue of Development in Practice, dedicated to pracademia. Varied set-ups will demonstrate the value of ISTR’s innovations in conference design to make the event more inclusive. They will also give momentum to ISTR’s new Pracademic Affinity Group.

In many fields of scholarship, literatures on pracademics recognise their role and achievements. Examples can be found in public administration (Posner, 2009) and in business (Panda 2014). In higher education, reflection and debates on pracademics’ traits and functions abound (Dickinson, Fowler and Griffiths 2020; Hollweck, Netolicky and Campbell 2022). A less apparent feature is attention to pathways taken by individuals to become pracademics and what they achieve in the process.

Given dedication to improve the human condition, surprisingly, the multi-disciplines of international development and Third Sector studies show little sign of similar reflections. One example are inabilities to recognise the types of impacts that pracademics help bring about as active change agents, particularly when interacting with nonprofits and civil society organisations. It is certainly not the case that the wide range of scholars involved in this field are unconcerned about what societal change their work can bring (e.g., Hoelscher. et al, 2022). Rather, taking on practical activism to this end often faces institutional obstacles and disincentives. As part of a broader perspective on the topic, this panel will draw on a survey carried out in 2022 that asked respondents about their value-added as well as how, through active engagement within society, they arrived at being pracademics. A striking reaction of survey respondents and consultations’ participants came with the revelation of a key component of their identity that they previously couldn’t name (‘there is a label for who I am’, ‘now there is a name for what I am professionally’) and the discovery of a community that they didn’t know they were part of (‘I am not alone’). Presentations on engagement with and impact through nonprofits will offer concrete points of reference illustrating pathways to pracademia.

References

Dickinson, J., Fowler, A. and Griffiths, T. (2020). Pracademics? Exploring transitions and professional identities in higher education. Studies in Higher Education 47:2, 290-304.
Hoelscher, M., List, R., Ruser, A. and Toepler, S. (eds) (2022). Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts - Essays in Honour of Helmut K. Anheier. Springer, Cham, Switzerland.
Hollweck, T., D.M: Netolicky and P. Campbell (2022). Defining and exploring pracademia: identity, community, and engagement. Journal of Professional Capital and Community 7:1, 6-25.
Panda, A. (2014). Bringing Academic and Corporate Worlds Closer: We Need Pracademics. Management and Labour Studies 39:2, 140-159.
Posner, P.L. (2009). The pracademic: An agenda for re‐engaging practitioners and academics. Public Budgeting & Finance 29:1, 12-26.

Sub Unit

• Other Third Sector related topics

Moderator

• Alan Fowler, Wits Business School

Individual Presentations

• Balancing the Early-Stage Career Path as a Pracademic: An Autoethnography Study from China - Ke Lu, University of Hong Kong; SHIQI PENG, The University of Hong Kong

• A feminist guide to pracademia: lessons from Argentina’s movement for legal abortion - Ines Maria Pousadela, CIVICUS/Universidad ORT Uruguay

• My Disability In My Academics As An Inspiration In Social Change For Persons With Disabilities In Zambia. - Thomas Mtonga, University of Zambia

• Impact in Progress: a pracademic's learning journey in NGO Collaboration - Willem Elbers, University of Nijmegen

• Pracademics at the crossroads of theory and practice in Cameroon - VALENTINE NGALIM, The University of Bamenda