Hochschuldidaktik und Hochschulforschung
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Item Early career researchers as stakeholders in university decision‐making in Europe: comparative perspectives(2026-01-07) Leišytė, Liudvika; Načinović Braje, Ivana; Almog, Shulamit; Baysan, Sultan; Carvalho, Teresa; Daunoraitė, Dovilė; Diogo, Sara; Papaioannou, Panourgias; Farmaki, Anna; Feldman, Shlomit; Külcür, Rakibe; Matijošytė, Inga; Pralgauskaitė, Sandra; Rangelova, Vanya; Šatkovskienė, DaliaThe voices of academics have traditionally been strong in university decision‐making bodies, where they participated in the shared governance of the university. It has been customary for senior academics to be represented in managing bodies and to exercise control over the key areas of strategy, finance, quality assurance, study programs, and/or human resources. With the new public management reforms that have swept through higher education (HE) systems, the power of academics has been reduced, while managerial guidance has increased, alongside the fostering of universities’ institutional autonomy. At the same time, the power of other stakeholders, such as students or industry representatives, has also been increasing as part and parcel of the governance reforms, albeit to different degrees and at different paces across various HE systems. In this context, this article seeks to examine the role that early career researchers (ECRs) play in university decision‐making bodies across different countries as internal stakeholders. The research is based on seven case studies from seven European and East Mediterranean countries drawing on documentary data and 55 semi‐structured interviews with ECRs and 14 managers, carried out in 2023–2024. Following stakeholder categories distinguished on the basis of their legitimacy, urgency, and power, this article investigates the extent to which ECRs perceive their voices to be heard. The findings show variance between the case studies regarding formal representation, with most universities in the study having limited representation of ECRs in university and faculty/school‐level decision‐making bodies. The voices of ECRs, however, are heard in informal ways.Item Intersectionality at German universities: empowering teaching staff as change agents with higher education didactic workshops(2026-01-07) Mergner, Julia; Pekşen, Sude; Leišytė, LiudvikaThe increasing diversity at German universities has been accompanied by the demand to widen participation among all groups of students. This challenges higher education teaching, requiring learning environments that acknowledge diverse experiences and needs. While diversity‐sensitive approaches have been the dominant response, they often address single diversity dimensions in isolation, neglecting intersectional interdependencies and structural power relations. An intersectional perspective, however, shifts the focus to power dynamics, knowledge production, and inclusive educational practices. This article argues that such an approach has a good potential to enable lecturers and students to become change agents by fostering critical thinking, reflective agency, and ethical commitment to dismantling systemic inequalities. This is particularly challenging in the German higher education system, where critical, antidiscriminatory pedagogical perspectives are mostly limited to certain disciplines. At the same time, the teaching staff enjoy extensive teaching autonomy, which provides them with freedom for individual engagement in this area. Therefore, implementing intersectional approaches in teaching requires targeted educational interventions that support teaching staff. Building on the concept of intersectional pedagogy, we introduce a case study of a higher education didactic workshop that was designed to raise awareness of intersectional perspectives in teaching. The findings highlight the potential of such workshops to influence teaching practices and promote the engagement of disciplinary teaching communities with intersectionality. This article concludes by discussing the implications for further developing workshop concepts and empowering teaching staff and students as agents of change within the German higher education system.Item Strengthening university capacity in regional innovation ecosystem through the participation in the European Universities initiative(2024-10-23) Zenkiene, Lina; Leisyte, LiudvikaIn this paper, we explore how participation in the strategic partnerships of the European University Alliances (EUAs) facilitates university capacity in regional development. The study utilizes the Quadruple Helix theoretical model and contributes to the literature on transnational university alliances in regional innovation ecosystems. A qualitative analysis of policy documents, media reports on EUA developments, alliance goals, and university implementation strategies is conducted within the context of Lithuanian higher education. In Lithuania’s case, the primary rationale for participating in the EU initiative is both academic and economic. Furthermore, it is framed as addressing higher education challenges such as a low internationalization level, a mismatch between human capital and labour market needs, and the attractiveness of higher education. To achieve the strategic goals of the alliances, universities build networks including cross-sectoral linkages and engage in co-creation activities. The expanded and deepened interactions among different organizational spheres (helices) aim to foster innovation in national HE policy, strengthen university capacity through organizational innovation, and re-design teaching and research to drive social and economic transformations.Item Strengthening university capacity in regional innovation ecosystem through the participation in the European Universities initiative(2024-10-23) Zenkiene, Lina; Leišyte, LiudvikaIn this paper, we explore how participation in the strategic partnerships of the European University Alliances (EUAs) facilitates university capacity in regional development. The study utilizes the Quadruple Helix theoretical model and contributes to the literature on transnational university alliances in regional innovation ecosystems. A qualitative analysis of policy documents, media reports on EUA developments, alliance goals, and university implementation strategies is conducted within the context of Lithuanian higher education. In Lithuania’s case, the primary rationale for participating in the EU initiative is both academic and economic. Furthermore, it is framed as addressing higher education challenges such as a low internationalization level, a mismatch between human capital and labour market needs, and the attractiveness of higher education. To achieve the strategic goals of the alliances, universities build networks including cross-sectoral linkages and engage in co-creation activities. The expanded and deepened interactions among different organizational spheres (helices) aim to foster innovation in national HE policy, strengthen university capacity through organizational innovation, and re-design teaching and research to drive social and economic transformations.Item Higher education policies and interdisciplinarity in Germany(2023-01-04) Leišytė, Liudvika; Rose, Anna-Lena; Sterk-Zeeman, NadineUniversities have increasingly been subjected to policy- and industry demands to produce multi- and interdisciplinary knowledge. This paper explores the extent to which different higher education policy instruments are used to promote interdisciplinarity in teaching and research at universities in the German higher education system comparing them across different federal states. Based on a manifest content analysis of higher education laws and performance agreements with universities in the 16 German states, we were able to distinguish between three types of states: Those a) with a general use of policy instruments aimed at all universities in a state, whereas considerable differences could be observed with regard to the degree of coercion (enabling versus prescriptive provisions) and scope (teaching or research), b) a directed use of policy instrument, targeting specific universities, and c) a hybrid use of policy instruments using both general and directed elements. This paper provides a novel mapping of the promotion of interdisciplinarity in German higher education policies through a variety of policy instruments and hereby contributes to the extant literature on interdisciplinarity in higher education.Item Study program innovation in the Triple Helix context: the case of cooperative study programs at a German university of applied sciences(2020-03-05) Schiller, Benjamin; Leišytė, LiudvikaThe purpose of this article is to understand how Triple Helix linkages foster study program innovation at the micro-level and how the entrepreneurial university shapes support structures and processes to foster this innovation at the meso-level. We draw on the case of cooperative study programs from a German university of applied sciences. We selected business administration and nursing as two different disciplinary examples. Cooperative study programs are delivered partly at university and partly in industry and illustrate the hybridity that shapes the knowledge transfer at a university. Our study draws on semi-structured interviews with professors, industry representatives, students and policy makers as well as on pertinent documents. Our data show that Triple-Helix interactions generate program innovations and, depending on the discipline, have a focus on a Double Helix. In addition, the study shows the processes and their limitations by which teaching is transferred in partnership with industry in the entrepreneurial university context.Item Translating student diversity(2021) Mergner, Julia; Leisyte, Liudvika; Wilkesmann, UweThe dissertation examines how German universities respond to student diversity in the context of the widening participation agenda and how variations in organizational responses can be explained. As a theoretical framework, the study builds on Scandinavian institutionalism (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996) that seeks to understand how organizations interpret institutional pressures and how these interpretations affect their daily organizational practices (Boxenbaum & Strangaard Pedersen, 2009; Sahlin & Wedlin, 2008). The study chooses the QPL funding program as one concrete example for a soft steering instrument within the widening participation agenda. To account for local variations, this study builds on a multiple case study design including three universities that participated in the QPL funding program and differ in type of institution, location and institutional profile. Data sources from the three case study universities include publicly accessible text materials, semi-structured interviews, group discussions and protocols from participatory observations. The processes of data collection and analysis were guided by strategies of grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The findings indicate how diversely universities interpreted the idea of student diversity in the context of the QPL initiative. Here the study explores not only how universities translate the institutional demand rhetorically or make ceremonial decisions, but also how these translations affect their daily routines and activities of teaching and studying. In addition, the results support theoretical assumptions that the act of interpretation is guided by institutional beliefs and norms that derive from the local context (Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2008). The study identified institutional characteristics and dominant diversity paradigms as explanatory factors for local variations. Finally, in accordance with Scandinavian institutionalism, the study pays special attention to how the idea of student diversity is materialized on the level of concrete actions at German universities. Using the coding paradigm (Corbin & Strauss, 1990), the study identified seven organizational practices to deal with student diversity that differ not only in their definitions of student diversity but also in terms of the contextual conditions in which they appear.Item The widening participation agenda in German higher education: discourses and legitimizing strategies(2019-01-10) Mergner, Julia; Leisyte, Liudvika; Bosse, ElkeAlthough participation in higher education (HE) has expanded in Europe, social inequalities remain a major political challenge. As HE expansion has not led to equal access and success, the mechanisms behind policies seeking to reduce inequalities need to be examined. Focusing on the widening participation agenda, this article investigates how universities translate political demands to their local contexts. The translation perspective is adopted to study the German HE system as an example characterized by high social exclusion. Based on policy document analysis, the study first explores the rationales underlying the discourse on widening participation. Second, a multiple case study design is used to investigate the organizational responses to the demand of widening participation. The findings indicate that the political discourse is dominated by two perspectives that regard widening participation as either a means to bring about social justice or to ensure a reliable pool of skilled labor. The study further reveals that different legitimizing strategies serve to link the policy of widening participation to local contexts. This study contributes to research on social inequalities in HE by introducing a translation perspective that permits analysis at both macro and organizational levels, while acknowledging institutional variations in organizational responses to political demands.Item Academic institutional entrepreneurs in Germany: navigating and shaping multi-level research commercialization governance(2018-12-18) Leisyte, Liudvika; Sigl, LisaIn this article, we aim to explore the agency of scientific entrepreneurs and research managers in shaping their Triple Helix contexts. Drawing on institutional documents and in-depth interviews with research managers and scientists in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the study shows that trust in scientific entrepreneurs from research managers, their scientific standing and leadership, and type of academic entrepreneurship are central in shaping the Triple Helix relationships. Research managers frame themselves as passive service-providers for scientists’ commercialization activities while scientists see them as facilitating creative employment arrangements. Research managers perceive scientists as self-motivated highly creative risk-takers. The studied scientific entrepreneurs negotiate their institutional arrangements and find flexible solutions for the structural barriers within their research organisations. At the same time, they tend to avoid taking personal risks when it comes to contractual arrangements and their careers. The study identifies two types of agency exerted to shape the Triple Helix context—bricolage and institutional entrepreneurship. Bricolage activities and the trust of research managers in the leadership and autonomy of scientific entrepreneurs prepare the basis for institutional change. This can be the ground for institutional entrepreneurship to take place and reshape the Triple Helix relationships in the particular context.