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Jon Nixon

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I have held professorships at four UK universities and am currently affiliated to Middlesex University, London, UK, as a Visiting Professor. My main area of interest lies within the field of intellectual history particularly as this relates to educational and political thought.
My most recently authored book - 'Erich Auerbach and the Secular World: Literary Criticism, Historiography, Post Colonial Theory and Beyond' - was published by Routledge in May 2022. I am currently co-editing with Tanya Fitzgerald and Helen Gunter 'Intellectual Leadership, Higher Education and Precarious Times' published by Bloomsbury in 2023, and working on my next book entitled 'Narratives of Memory and Loss: Vasily Grossman, W.G. Sebald and Aminatta Forna'
Previously authored books include: 'Hannah Arendt and the Promise of Education' (Springer, 2020), 'Rosa Luxemburg and the Struggle for Democratic Renewal' (Pluto Press, 2018), 'Hans-Georg Gadamer: The Hermeneutical Imagination' (Springer, 2017) and 'Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Friendship' (Bloomsbury, 2015).
My trio of authored books on higher education policy and practice were published between 2008 and 2012 in the wake of the global economic crisis: 'Towards the Virtuous University' (Routledge, 2008), 'Higher Education and the Public Good' (Bloomsbury, 2011) and 'Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education' (Bloomsbury, 2012).
I also co-edited 'The Reorientation of Higher Education: Beyond the East-West Dichotomy' (with Adamson and Su, Springer, 2012) and 'Academic Identities in Higher Education: The Changing European Landscape' (with Evans, Bloomsbury, 2015). My edited 'Higher Education in Austerity Europe' was published by Bloomsbury in Septembers 2017. I am a founding co-editor of the Bloomsbury 'Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education' series, which was established with a view to articulating new forms democratic and international leadership within higher education.

A full and up to date list of my publications can be accessed via this source (see 'Jon Nixon - Publications' listed below) or by emailing me on [email protected]

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James Alexander

Bilkent University

Claudio I . Remeseira

Universidad de Buenos Aires

University of Edinburgh

Richard Whatmore

University of St Andrews

Markku Hyrkkänen

Tampere University

Petri Koikkalainen

University of Lapland

Petri Koikkalainen

Richard Devetak

The University of Queensland, Australia

Arthur Alfaix Assis

Universidade de Brasília - UnB

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Books by Jon Nixon

Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method. London and New York, 2023

Nixon, J. (2023) Truth, in S. Berger (ed) Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method. London and New Y... more

Truth in a Time of Untruth : The Academic as Public Educator

Chapter 6 of Representations of the Intellectual Edited by Jean McNiff published by Routledge, 2023

This chapter addresses the question of how higher education should respond to the rise of populis... more This chapter addresses the question of how higher education should respond to the rise of populism as witnessed across Europe and the USA. Populism involves two related claims: first, populists claim that ‘the voice of the people’ takes precedent over all other sources of legitimate political authority (the judiciary, parliament, local government); second, they claim to know what constitutes ‘the people’ who are invariably defined against ‘other people’ (immigrants, refugees, religious minorities, recipients of state benefit, the unemployed, etc.) Populism thus gives rise to a style of political leadership – generally referred to as demagogy – the legitimacy of which is based on those two claims. Demagogues no less than dictators pose a grave threat to modern democratic systems since they challenge the principle of the separation of powers upon which such democracies are based. The question then arises as to how the institutions of civil society in general – and institutions of higher education in particular – should respond to the recent rise of demagogy and the populist rhetoric it relies upon. What happens to truth, when truth is whatever the demagogues – claiming to speak with ‘the voice of the people’ – say it is?

Erich Auerbach and the Secular World: Literary Criticism, Historiography, Postmodernism and Beyond

Erich Auerbach and the Secular World: Literary Criticism, Historiography, Postmodernism and Beyond, 2022

Erich Auerbach was a Jewish refugee who in exile in Istanbul during WWII wrote one of the major ... more Erich Auerbach was a Jewish refugee who in exile in
Istanbul during WWII wrote one of the major works of 20th
Century literary criticism. This book explores the major
themes of his life’s work, relates that work to his own life
history, and explains his enduring relevance within the field
of literary and cultural theory.

The Hermeneutics of Love

Higher Education and Love ISBN 9783030823719, 2021

This chapter focuses on what I call love in action: love made manifest (rendered ostensible) in h... more This chapter focuses on what I call love in action: love made manifest (rendered ostensible) in human practice. I concentrate on the work of three novelists each of whom – in her or his own way – treat kindness, attentiveness and happiness as essential elements in the constitution of love. Across these three love stories there is an emphasis – as one of the three story-tellers puts it – on ‘the interconnectedness of things’. In attempting to relate insights derived from these very different narratives to the experience of higher education, I map some of what I call ‘spaces of love’: cosmopolitan spaces, spaces of dialogue, spaces of uncertainty and truthful spaces. These are, I suggest, the spaces which open up the possibility of becoming ‘a mind in love’.

‘Orderly’ identities: university rankings and the shaping of the academic mind

Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices , 2020

Chapter 1 of S. Rider, T. Besley, M.A. Peters and M. Hyvönen (eds.) Evaluating Education: Normati... more

Arendt and 'worldliness': Education in and for a world of difference

Hannah Arendt on Educational Thinking and Practice in Dark Times: Education for a world in Crisis, 2020

Hannah Arendt’s The Life of the Mind was originally conceived as a three volume work, with separa... more Hannah Arendt’s The Life of the Mind was originally conceived as a three volume work, with separate volumes focusing on thinking, willing and judging. In the event only the first two volumes were completed – focusing on thinking and willing respectively. Editing the text after Arendt’s death in 1975, Mary McCarthy attempted to fill the gap by publishing excerpts from Arendt’s lectures on Kant’s political philosophy. This was an ingenious editorial move, but fails to reveal the conceptual links between thinking, willing and judging that are hinted at in the first two volumes of The Life of the Mind and in Arendt’s earlier work. This chapter explores these conceptual links with reference to three related themes: (a) judgement and what Arendt terms representative thinking, (b) judgement and her notion of right action, and (c) judgement as exercised within the public sphere. A discussion of the implications for how we understand and prioritise professional judgement within educational and policy-related settings provides the main framing device for this chapter.

Hannah Arendt: The Promise of Education

Hannah Arendt: The Promise of Education, 2020

Chapter 1 provides an overview of Arendt’s life and work and identifies some of the characteristi... more Chapter 1 provides an overview of Arendt’s life and work and identifies some of the characteristic elements of her own thinking: its responsiveness to world events; its refusal to be confined to any single disciplinary frame; and its multilingual versatility. The central chapters focus on key themes to which Arendt returned throughout her life: natality, promise and plurality (Chapter 2); thinking judgement and action (Chapter 3); and equality, freedom and public space (Chapter 4). They highlight the synergy between these themes; relate them to Arendt’s lifelong preoccupation with thinking, judging and willing as defining features of what it means to be human; and draw out their implications for our own understanding of the ends and purposes of education. Chapter 5 frames those ends and purposes within a broader discussion of Arendt’s legacy and her continuing relevance within the current context. The appendix provides a chronology of Arendt’s life and work.

The Storm from Paradise

Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2018

Contribution to 'Educational Philosophy and Theory' (50th Celebratory Issue: What Comes After Pos... more

Taking Responsibility: Truth, Trust, and Justice

Values of the University in a Time of Uncertaintyty, 2019

Contribution to P. Gibbs, J. Jameson and A. Elwick (eds) (2019) 'Values of the University in a Ti... more

Resources of Hope: Truth and Reason

Higher Education and Hope, edited by Paul Gibbs and Andrew Peterson, 2019

What distinguishes those who hope from those who merely indulge in wishful thinking is their will... more What distinguishes those who hope from those who merely indulge in wishful thinking is their willingness to confront and challenge the apparent hopelessness of the situation in which they find themselves. Therein lies the paradox of hope. The situation in which we-located in the first quarter of the 21 st Century-find ourselves in is one of increasing instability and insecurity. We are living in a divided and divisive world in which the need for global interconnectivity clashes with a renewed emphasis on cultural and national boundary maintenance. Hope requires us to acknowledge-in our own lives and the lives of others-the consequences of this contradiction, and to find within it the necessary resources to seek to resolve it. Some at least of these resources lie in the public institutions of civil society: institutions that-by their very existence-acknowledge the importance of civil association and the recognition of equal worth. As one such institution, the university has two invaluable resources of hope to bring to our divided world: its passion for truth and its insistence on the necessity of reasoning together. By providing a space in which these resources can be developed and used for the common good, universities provide-in the face of a deeply divided world-hope of a common world: not an ideal world, but a better world in which the cravings of competition and the striving for cooperation and collaboration find a kinder balance. But, of course, this, too, is an expression of hope-hope that the liberal university, bedevilled as it is by privatisation, marketization and managerialism, can live up to its historic mission.

Rosa Luxemburg and the Struggle for Democratic Renewal

Rosa Luxemburg and the Struggle for Democratic Renewal, 2018

Jon Nixon Thinking within, against and beyond austerity.pdf

Editorial introduction to 'Higher Education in Austerity Europe' (Bloomsbury, 2017)

Hans-Georg Gadamer: The Hermeneutical Imagination

Hans-Georg Gadamer was one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th Century. Throughout his life ... more Hans-Georg Gadamer was one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th Century. Throughout his life he was committed to exploring the nature of human understanding. He argued that understanding is realised through the process of application. We do not understand and then apply our achieved understanding. Rather, we achieve understand through application. It is through that process of application that we achieve human agency, gain shared understanding, and begin to think in imaginative and creative ways about realisable possibilities.

This book provides a brief introduction to Gadamer’s thinking. It explains how he became one of the greatest philosopher-teachers of the 20th Century and how his thinking could – in boldly imaginative ways – inform our thinking about education for lifelong learning. He insisted on the supreme importance of prior learning, but also on the unpredictability of human understanding and on the possibility of new and unforeseeable beginnings. Having lived through the catastrophe of two world wars, he became an important voice in the debate on the future of a reunified Germany and the role of the university in shaping the values and outlook of the new Europe. His work is of immense significance for all those involved in the education of future generations.

Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Friendship

For Hannah Arendt, friendship had political relevance and importance. She beleived that the essen... more For Hannah Arendt, friendship had political relevance and importance. She beleived that the essence of friendship consisted in discourse, and that it is only through discourse that the world is rendered humane. This single authored book explores some of the key ideas in Hannah Arendt's work through a study of four lifelong friendships - with Heinrich Blucher, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers and Mary McCarthy. The book draws on correspondence from both sides, illuminating our understanding of the social contexts within which Arendt's thinking developed and was clarified.

Academic Identities in Higher Education: The Changing European Landscape:

'Academic Identities in Higher Education' - co-edited by Linda Evans and Jon Nixon - highlights t... more 'Academic Identities in Higher Education' - co-edited by Linda Evans and Jon Nixon - highlights the multiple influences acting upon academic practitioners and documents some of the ways in which they are positioning themselves in relation to these often compelling pressures. The contributions explore the process of identity formation and articulation and address the question: what does it mean to be an academic in 21st century Europe?

Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education: Arendt, Berger, Said, Nussbaum and their Legacies

'Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education' - authored by Jon Nixon - focuses on the work of ... more 'Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education' - authored by Jon Nixon - focuses on the work of four public intellectuals each of whom reaches out to a wide public readership and develops our understanding regarding the nature of interpretation in the everyday world: Hannah Arendt's work on 'representative thinking', John Berger's injunction to 'hold everything dear', Edward Said's notion of 'democratic criticism' , and Martha Nussbaum's studies in the intelligence of feeling. These thinkers provide valuable perspectives on the nature and purpose of interpretation in everyday life. The implications of these perspectives for the development of a transformative pedadagogy - and for the renewal of an educated public - are examined in relation to the current context of higher education within a knowledge society.

The Reorientation of Higher Education: Challenging the East-West Dichotomy

This book - co-edited by Bob Adamson, Jon Nixon and Feng Su - presents accounts of the reposition... more This book - co-edited by Bob Adamson, Jon Nixon and Feng Su - presents accounts of the repositioning of higher education institutions across a range of contexts in the East and the West. It argues that global governance, institutional organization and academic practice are complementary elements within the process of institutional repositioning. While systems, institutions and individuals in the different contexts are are subjected to similar global trends and pressures, the reorientation of higher education takes diverse forms as a result of the particularities of those contexts. That reorientation cannot be explained in terms of East-West dichotomies and divisions. Globalisation necessitates complex interconnectivities of regionality, culture and geopolitics that this book explores in relation to specific cases and contexts.

Higher Education and the Public Good: Imagining the University

Jon Nixon argues that the university now has to be re-imagined as a social, civic and cosmopolita... more Jon Nixon argues that the university now has to be re-imagined as a social, civic and cosmopolitan good that is central to the well-being of civil society and its citizens. Key chapters focus on capability, reasoning and purposefulness as the common resources of higher education. There is an urgent need for sect-wide planning and collaboration, the development of a public culture across institutions, and a broadening of the higher education curriculum.

Towards the Virtuous University: The Moral Bases of Academic Practice

This single authored book treats the ethical aspects of the various activities that comprise acad... more This single authored book treats the ethical aspects of the various activities that comprise academic practice - teaching, research, scholarship and collegial relations - as a unified whole. It argues that these activities, together, form a moral unity which is the defining feature of academic practice. The 'virtuous university' is not a retreat into the old values of an elitist ivory tower - rather, it is a rejection of the current deeply stratified university system that prematurely selects students for differentiated institutional streams. This book is essential reading for anyone in higher education today who is looking to define the moral bases of their own practice.

Transforming Learning in Schools and Communities: The Remaking of Education for a Cosmopolitan Society

by Jon Nixon and Stewart Ranson

Many educators have been looking for a fundamentally different approach to engage young people an... more Many educators have been looking for a fundamentally different approach to engage young people and encourage progress in learning. Supported by recent public policy developments, a transformation is beginning to take place in the practice of many schools. The focus of learning is shifting away from the child as an individual in a classroom detached from the surrounding neighborhood to a learning community that embraces carers and families as well as young people and teachers. This book - co-edited by Bob Lingard, Jon Nixon and Stewart Ranson - analyses the organising principles of this cultural transformation and considers how it will shape learning in schools and communities throughout the world. Bringing together key thinkers from the fields of new learning, new communities of educational practice and new forms of educational governance, it argues for the interconnectedness of pedagogy, institutions and governance.

Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method. London and New York, 2023

Nixon, J. (2023) Truth, in S. Berger (ed) Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method. London and New Y... more

Truth in a Time of Untruth : The Academic as Public Educator

Chapter 6 of Representations of the Intellectual Edited by Jean McNiff published by Routledge, 2023

This chapter addresses the question of how higher education should respond to the rise of populis... more This chapter addresses the question of how higher education should respond to the rise of populism as witnessed across Europe and the USA. Populism involves two related claims: first, populists claim that ‘the voice of the people’ takes precedent over all other sources of legitimate political authority (the judiciary, parliament, local government); second, they claim to know what constitutes ‘the people’ who are invariably defined against ‘other people’ (immigrants, refugees, religious minorities, recipients of state benefit, the unemployed, etc.) Populism thus gives rise to a style of political leadership – generally referred to as demagogy – the legitimacy of which is based on those two claims. Demagogues no less than dictators pose a grave threat to modern democratic systems since they challenge the principle of the separation of powers upon which such democracies are based. The question then arises as to how the institutions of civil society in general – and institutions of higher education in particular – should respond to the recent rise of demagogy and the populist rhetoric it relies upon. What happens to truth, when truth is whatever the demagogues – claiming to speak with ‘the voice of the people’ – say it is?

Erich Auerbach and the Secular World: Literary Criticism, Historiography, Postmodernism and Beyond

Erich Auerbach and the Secular World: Literary Criticism, Historiography, Postmodernism and Beyond, 2022

Erich Auerbach was a Jewish refugee who in exile in Istanbul during WWII wrote one of the major ... more Erich Auerbach was a Jewish refugee who in exile in
Istanbul during WWII wrote one of the major works of 20th
Century literary criticism. This book explores the major
themes of his life’s work, relates that work to his own life
history, and explains his enduring relevance within the field
of literary and cultural theory.

The Hermeneutics of Love

Higher Education and Love ISBN 9783030823719, 2021

This chapter focuses on what I call love in action: love made manifest (rendered ostensible) in h... more This chapter focuses on what I call love in action: love made manifest (rendered ostensible) in human practice. I concentrate on the work of three novelists each of whom – in her or his own way – treat kindness, attentiveness and happiness as essential elements in the constitution of love. Across these three love stories there is an emphasis – as one of the three story-tellers puts it – on ‘the interconnectedness of things’. In attempting to relate insights derived from these very different narratives to the experience of higher education, I map some of what I call ‘spaces of love’: cosmopolitan spaces, spaces of dialogue, spaces of uncertainty and truthful spaces. These are, I suggest, the spaces which open up the possibility of becoming ‘a mind in love’.

‘Orderly’ identities: university rankings and the shaping of the academic mind

Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices , 2020

Chapter 1 of S. Rider, T. Besley, M.A. Peters and M. Hyvönen (eds.) Evaluating Education: Normati... more

Arendt and 'worldliness': Education in and for a world of difference

Hannah Arendt on Educational Thinking and Practice in Dark Times: Education for a world in Crisis, 2020

Hannah Arendt’s The Life of the Mind was originally conceived as a three volume work, with separa... more Hannah Arendt’s The Life of the Mind was originally conceived as a three volume work, with separate volumes focusing on thinking, willing and judging. In the event only the first two volumes were completed – focusing on thinking and willing respectively. Editing the text after Arendt’s death in 1975, Mary McCarthy attempted to fill the gap by publishing excerpts from Arendt’s lectures on Kant’s political philosophy. This was an ingenious editorial move, but fails to reveal the conceptual links between thinking, willing and judging that are hinted at in the first two volumes of The Life of the Mind and in Arendt’s earlier work. This chapter explores these conceptual links with reference to three related themes: (a) judgement and what Arendt terms representative thinking, (b) judgement and her notion of right action, and (c) judgement as exercised within the public sphere. A discussion of the implications for how we understand and prioritise professional judgement within educational and policy-related settings provides the main framing device for this chapter.

Hannah Arendt: The Promise of Education

Hannah Arendt: The Promise of Education, 2020

Chapter 1 provides an overview of Arendt’s life and work and identifies some of the characteristi... more Chapter 1 provides an overview of Arendt’s life and work and identifies some of the characteristic elements of her own thinking: its responsiveness to world events; its refusal to be confined to any single disciplinary frame; and its multilingual versatility. The central chapters focus on key themes to which Arendt returned throughout her life: natality, promise and plurality (Chapter 2); thinking judgement and action (Chapter 3); and equality, freedom and public space (Chapter 4). They highlight the synergy between these themes; relate them to Arendt’s lifelong preoccupation with thinking, judging and willing as defining features of what it means to be human; and draw out their implications for our own understanding of the ends and purposes of education. Chapter 5 frames those ends and purposes within a broader discussion of Arendt’s legacy and her continuing relevance within the current context. The appendix provides a chronology of Arendt’s life and work.

The Storm from Paradise

Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2018

Contribution to 'Educational Philosophy and Theory' (50th Celebratory Issue: What Comes After Pos... more

Taking Responsibility: Truth, Trust, and Justice

Values of the University in a Time of Uncertaintyty, 2019

Contribution to P. Gibbs, J. Jameson and A. Elwick (eds) (2019) 'Values of the University in a Ti... more

Resources of Hope: Truth and Reason

Higher Education and Hope, edited by Paul Gibbs and Andrew Peterson, 2019

What distinguishes those who hope from those who merely indulge in wishful thinking is their will... more What distinguishes those who hope from those who merely indulge in wishful thinking is their willingness to confront and challenge the apparent hopelessness of the situation in which they find themselves. Therein lies the paradox of hope. The situation in which we-located in the first quarter of the 21 st Century-find ourselves in is one of increasing instability and insecurity. We are living in a divided and divisive world in which the need for global interconnectivity clashes with a renewed emphasis on cultural and national boundary maintenance. Hope requires us to acknowledge-in our own lives and the lives of others-the consequences of this contradiction, and to find within it the necessary resources to seek to resolve it. Some at least of these resources lie in the public institutions of civil society: institutions that-by their very existence-acknowledge the importance of civil association and the recognition of equal worth. As one such institution, the university has two invaluable resources of hope to bring to our divided world: its passion for truth and its insistence on the necessity of reasoning together. By providing a space in which these resources can be developed and used for the common good, universities provide-in the face of a deeply divided world-hope of a common world: not an ideal world, but a better world in which the cravings of competition and the striving for cooperation and collaboration find a kinder balance. But, of course, this, too, is an expression of hope-hope that the liberal university, bedevilled as it is by privatisation, marketization and managerialism, can live up to its historic mission.

Rosa Luxemburg and the Struggle for Democratic Renewal

Rosa Luxemburg and the Struggle for Democratic Renewal, 2018

Jon Nixon Thinking within, against and beyond austerity.pdf

Editorial introduction to 'Higher Education in Austerity Europe' (Bloomsbury, 2017)

Hans-Georg Gadamer: The Hermeneutical Imagination

Hans-Georg Gadamer was one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th Century. Throughout his life ... more Hans-Georg Gadamer was one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th Century. Throughout his life he was committed to exploring the nature of human understanding. He argued that understanding is realised through the process of application. We do not understand and then apply our achieved understanding. Rather, we achieve understand through application. It is through that process of application that we achieve human agency, gain shared understanding, and begin to think in imaginative and creative ways about realisable possibilities.

This book provides a brief introduction to Gadamer’s thinking. It explains how he became one of the greatest philosopher-teachers of the 20th Century and how his thinking could – in boldly imaginative ways – inform our thinking about education for lifelong learning. He insisted on the supreme importance of prior learning, but also on the unpredictability of human understanding and on the possibility of new and unforeseeable beginnings. Having lived through the catastrophe of two world wars, he became an important voice in the debate on the future of a reunified Germany and the role of the university in shaping the values and outlook of the new Europe. His work is of immense significance for all those involved in the education of future generations.

Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Friendship

For Hannah Arendt, friendship had political relevance and importance. She beleived that the essen... more For Hannah Arendt, friendship had political relevance and importance. She beleived that the essence of friendship consisted in discourse, and that it is only through discourse that the world is rendered humane. This single authored book explores some of the key ideas in Hannah Arendt's work through a study of four lifelong friendships - with Heinrich Blucher, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers and Mary McCarthy. The book draws on correspondence from both sides, illuminating our understanding of the social contexts within which Arendt's thinking developed and was clarified.

Academic Identities in Higher Education: The Changing European Landscape:

'Academic Identities in Higher Education' - co-edited by Linda Evans and Jon Nixon - highlights t... more 'Academic Identities in Higher Education' - co-edited by Linda Evans and Jon Nixon - highlights the multiple influences acting upon academic practitioners and documents some of the ways in which they are positioning themselves in relation to these often compelling pressures. The contributions explore the process of identity formation and articulation and address the question: what does it mean to be an academic in 21st century Europe?

Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education: Arendt, Berger, Said, Nussbaum and their Legacies

'Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education' - authored by Jon Nixon - focuses on the work of ... more 'Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education' - authored by Jon Nixon - focuses on the work of four public intellectuals each of whom reaches out to a wide public readership and develops our understanding regarding the nature of interpretation in the everyday world: Hannah Arendt's work on 'representative thinking', John Berger's injunction to 'hold everything dear', Edward Said's notion of 'democratic criticism' , and Martha Nussbaum's studies in the intelligence of feeling. These thinkers provide valuable perspectives on the nature and purpose of interpretation in everyday life. The implications of these perspectives for the development of a transformative pedadagogy - and for the renewal of an educated public - are examined in relation to the current context of higher education within a knowledge society.

The Reorientation of Higher Education: Challenging the East-West Dichotomy

This book - co-edited by Bob Adamson, Jon Nixon and Feng Su - presents accounts of the reposition... more This book - co-edited by Bob Adamson, Jon Nixon and Feng Su - presents accounts of the repositioning of higher education institutions across a range of contexts in the East and the West. It argues that global governance, institutional organization and academic practice are complementary elements within the process of institutional repositioning. While systems, institutions and individuals in the different contexts are are subjected to similar global trends and pressures, the reorientation of higher education takes diverse forms as a result of the particularities of those contexts. That reorientation cannot be explained in terms of East-West dichotomies and divisions. Globalisation necessitates complex interconnectivities of regionality, culture and geopolitics that this book explores in relation to specific cases and contexts.

Higher Education and the Public Good: Imagining the University

Jon Nixon argues that the university now has to be re-imagined as a social, civic and cosmopolita... more Jon Nixon argues that the university now has to be re-imagined as a social, civic and cosmopolitan good that is central to the well-being of civil society and its citizens. Key chapters focus on capability, reasoning and purposefulness as the common resources of higher education. There is an urgent need for sect-wide planning and collaboration, the development of a public culture across institutions, and a broadening of the higher education curriculum.

Towards the Virtuous University: The Moral Bases of Academic Practice

This single authored book treats the ethical aspects of the various activities that comprise acad... more This single authored book treats the ethical aspects of the various activities that comprise academic practice - teaching, research, scholarship and collegial relations - as a unified whole. It argues that these activities, together, form a moral unity which is the defining feature of academic practice. The 'virtuous university' is not a retreat into the old values of an elitist ivory tower - rather, it is a rejection of the current deeply stratified university system that prematurely selects students for differentiated institutional streams. This book is essential reading for anyone in higher education today who is looking to define the moral bases of their own practice.

Transforming Learning in Schools and Communities: The Remaking of Education for a Cosmopolitan Society

by Jon Nixon and Stewart Ranson

Many educators have been looking for a fundamentally different approach to engage young people an... more Many educators have been looking for a fundamentally different approach to engage young people and encourage progress in learning. Supported by recent public policy developments, a transformation is beginning to take place in the practice of many schools. The focus of learning is shifting away from the child as an individual in a classroom detached from the surrounding neighborhood to a learning community that embraces carers and families as well as young people and teachers. This book - co-edited by Bob Lingard, Jon Nixon and Stewart Ranson - analyses the organising principles of this cultural transformation and considers how it will shape learning in schools and communities throughout the world. Bringing together key thinkers from the fields of new learning, new communities of educational practice and new forms of educational governance, it argues for the interconnectedness of pedagogy, institutions and governance.

Review: Symbiotic Autoethnography: Moving beyond the Boundaries of Qualitative Methodologies, by Liana Beattie

Journal of Autoethnography

Erich Auerbach and the Secular World

Higher education and its discontents : a conversation with Jon Nixon

The audit culture resulting from neoliberal policies has had a deleterious effect on all sectors ... more The audit culture resulting from neoliberal policies has had a deleterious effect on all sectors of society, and no less so on the universities, says higher education expert Jon Nixon. Clearly, the logic of austerity constitutes an existential threat to the great humanistic traditions of scholarship

Learning to lead for transformation: an African perspective on educational leadership

Comparative Education, Nov 20, 2022

Jon Nixon (2022) Review of Learning to lead for transformations: an African perspective on educat... more

Resources of Hope: Truth and Reason

Higher Education and Hope, 2019

What distinguishes those who hope from those who merely indulge in wishful thinking is their will... more What distinguishes those who hope from those who merely indulge in wishful thinking is their willingness to confront and challenge the apparent hopelessness of the situation in which they find themselves. Therein lies the paradox of hope. The situation in which we—located in the first quarter of the twenty-first century—find ourselves in is one of increasing instability and insecurity. We are living in a divided and divisive world in which the need for global interconnectivity clashes with a renewed emphasis on cultural and national boundary maintenance. Hope requires us to acknowledge—in our own lives and the lives of others—the consequences of this contradiction, and to find within it the necessary resources to seek to resolve it. Some at least of these resources lie in the public institutions of civil society: institutions that—by their very existence—acknowledge the importance of civil association and the recognition of equal worth. As one such institution, the university has two invaluable resources of hope to bring to our divided world: its passion for truth and its insistence on the necessity of reasoning together. By providing a space in which these resources can be developed and used for the common good, universities provide—in the face of a deeply divided world—hope of a common world: not an ideal world, but a better world in which the cravings of competition and the striving for cooperation and collaboration find a kinder balance. But, of course, this, too, is an expression of hope—hope that the liberal university, bedevilled as it is by privatisation, marketization and managerialism, can live up to its historic mission.

‘The ‘questionableness’ of things: opening up the conversation’

The authors show, through its structure and form, what it means to open up a collaborative conver... more The authors show, through its structure and form, what it means to open up a collaborative conversation. This chapter developed from a number of conversations that took place at the Fourth International Conference on Value and Virtue in Practice-Based Research, the twin themes of which were 'openness' and 'criticality'. These chance and often fleeting conversations focused on ideas explored in the keynote address that Jon delivered at the conference, but spanned out into a wider discussion of the relevance of those ideas within different areas of professional practice.

New Public Management or Neoliberalism, Higher Education

Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions, 2017

Re-Imagining the Public Good

Education and Intercultural Identity

Education and Intercultural Identity, 2021

Resources of Hope: Truth and Reason

What distinguishes those who hope from those who merely indulge in wishful thinking is their will... more What distinguishes those who hope from those who merely indulge in wishful thinking is their willingness to confront and challenge the apparent hopelessness of the situation in which they find themselves. Therein lies the paradox of hope. The situation in which we—located in the first quarter of the twenty-first century—find ourselves in is one of increasing instability and insecurity. We are living in a divided and divisive world in which the need for global interconnectivity clashes with a renewed emphasis on cultural and national boundary maintenance. Hope requires us to acknowledge—in our own lives and the lives of others—the consequences of this contradiction, and to find within it the necessary resources to seek to resolve it. Some at least of these resources lie in the public institutions of civil society: institutions that—by their very existence—acknowledge the importance of civil association and the recognition of equal worth. As one such institution, the university has tw...

Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education: Arendt, Berger, Said, Nussbaum, and their Legacies. By Jon Nixon. New York, N.Y.: Continuum, 2012. xii + 166 pages. ISBN 978-1-4411-1715-1. $130.00

Teaching Theology & Religion, 2013

Relationships of virtue: rethinking the goods of civil association

Ethics and Education, 2006

This paper focuses, not on the existing conditions of institutional association, but on hoped-for... more This paper focuses, not on the existing conditions of institutional association, but on hoped-for conditions that would have to be met for professional relationships within higher education to aspire to what Aristotle referred to as ‘virtuous friendship’. Such relationships, it is argued, constitute the social content of hope in that they look to new perspectives on institutional renewal and professional regeneration. They provide a context of mutuality and reciprocity within which individuals can begin to realise, through the acquisition of ‘functional capabilities’, their particular capacities. The question then arises as to the conditions necessary for generating and sustaining such relationships within the increasingly differentiated and stratified institutional settings of the higher education sector and across an academic workforce that has become fractionalised and atomised around increasingly complex divisions of academic labour. It is that question which this paper seeks to address. ‘Civil society is fragile, and it needs to be extended’ (Hall, 1995, p. 27)

The Hermeneutics of Love

Higher Education and Love, 2021

This chapter focuses on what I call love in action: love made manifest (rendered ostensible) in h... more This chapter focuses on what I call love in action: love made manifest (rendered ostensible) in human practice. I concentrate on the work of three novelists each of whom – in her or his own way – treat kindness, attentiveness and happiness as essential elements in the constitution of love. Across these three love stories there is an emphasis – as one of the three story-tellers puts it – on ‘the interconnectedness of things’. In attempting to relate insights derived from these very different narratives to the experience of higher education, I map some of what I call ‘spaces of love’: cosmopolitan spaces, spaces of dialogue, spaces of uncertainty and truthful spaces. These are, I suggest, the spaces which open up the possibility of becoming ‘a mind in love’.

[Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices] The Governing-Evaluation-Knowledge Nexus (Swedish Higher Education as a Case) ||

The ‘questionableness’ of things

Values and Virtues in Higher Education Research, 2016

Mutual Understanding

SpringerBriefs in Education, 2017

Arendt and ‘Worldliness’: Education in and for a World of Difference

Hannah Arendt on Educational Thinking and Practice in Dark Times, 2020

Hannah Arendt’s The Life of the Mind was originally conceived as a three volume work, with separa... more Hannah Arendt’s The Life of the Mind was originally conceived as a three volume work, with separate volumes focusing on thinking, willing and judging. In the event only the first two volumes were completed – focusing on thinking and willing respectively. Editing the text after Arendt’s death in 1975, Mary McCarthy attempted to fill the gap by publishing excerpts from Arendt’s lectures on Kant’s political philosophy. This was an ingenious editorial move, but fails to reveal the conceptual links between thinking, willing and judging that are hinted at in the first two volumes of The Life of the Mind and in Arendt’s earlier work. This chapter explores these conceptual links with reference to three related themes: (a) judgement and what Arendt terms representative thinking, (b) judgement and her notion of right action, and (c) judgement as exercised within the public sphere. A discussion of the implications for how we understand and prioritise professional judgement within educational and policy-related settings provides the main framing device for this chapter.

Natality, Promise and Plurality: Education in and for the World

SpringerBriefs in Education, 2020

The three central chapters (Chaps. 2– 4 inclusive) focus on key themes to which Arendt returned t... more The three central chapters (Chaps. 2– 4 inclusive) focus on key themes to which Arendt returned throughout her life. This chapter focuses specifically on natality, promise and plurality. The central sections of the chapter focus on education as providing new beginnings; education as a cross-generational promise of ongoing sustainability; and education as a process of critically engaging with the world in all its plurality and diversity. The chapter concludes with questions regarding the implications of this thematic for the practice of teaching and learning and the overall ends and purposes of education.

Seeing What Is Questionable: Transformative Pedagogies and the Hermeneutic Subject

Transdisciplinary Higher Education, 2017

This chapter approaches the topic of transdisciplinarity through a consideration of some of the i... more This chapter approaches the topic of transdisciplinarity through a consideration of some of the ideas explored by Hans-Georg Gadamer in his magnum opus, Truth and Method, as well as in his later writings and interviews: ideas relating to notions of ‘horizon’, ‘prejudice’ and ‘method’. Although written as a defence of the humanities against what he saw as the encroachment of the scientific method, Gadamer’s contribution to philosophical hermeneutics is now generally seen as having relevance across the entire field of human understanding. The chapter aims to open up a discussion on the possible reconfiguration of pedagogy around the themes of (1) the primacy of the question (2) the idea of inter-connective understanding and (3) the unpredictability of learning outcomes. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the relevance of Gadamer’s ideas for the current debate on transdisciplinarity within higher education settings.

Beyond Method of my Hans-Georg Gadamer: The Hermeneutical Imagination

Applying the method is what the person does who never finds out anything new, who never brings to... more Applying the method is what the person does who never finds out anything new, who never brings to light an interpretation that has revelatory power. (Gadamer, 2001, 42) I Introductory remarks: understanding and application Gadamer resolutely refuses to provide us with a rule book or anything approaching a method. There can, he insists, be no step-by-step procedures leading from understanding to application, since application and understanding comprise a single unified process. To understand is to apply whatever it is that I am seeking to understand to my own unique circumstances. This is a dizzying-and potentially anxiety-inducing-prospect. An initial response might well be: How, without the aid of any procedural rules, can I begin to set about this task of understanding? This is the kind of response we experience when, for example, we are confronted with a work of art or piece of music that defies our expectations-or a text such as Gadamer's Truth and Method that challenges our...

Conference Address - World Class Universities: A Contested Concept, Uppsala 15-16 May, 2019, University of Uppsala, Sweden

Disorderly Identities: University Rankings and the Re-ordering ofthe Acadamic Mind, 2019

This address focuses on the use of university rankings as a means of ostensibly achieving increas... more This address focuses on the use of university rankings as a means of ostensibly achieving increased transparency and covertly introducing a competitive market which has impacted on the sector as a whole, on institutions, and on individuals. The systemic characteristics of this new and now increasingly dominant market-driven order are outlined, followed by an exposition of how that order has impacted on the mind-set of academic practitioners by defining the norms of academic professionalism and academic practice. A new kind of orderliness now circumscribes and defines what it means to be an academic. Some of the emergent but pressing alternatives to this identity-kit of orderliness are suggested: disorderly identities that transgress the spatial boundaries of the dominant order, challenge its control of the chronology of that order, and begin to constitute participative and non-hierarchical foci of pedagogical action and participative research.

Uppsala Seminar Jon Nixon October 2017

Introduction Hannah Arendt characterised the human condition in terms of plurality and the unpred... more Introduction Hannah Arendt characterised the human condition in terms of plurality and the unpredictability and irreversibility of human action that flows from that plurality: we cannot know what the consequences of our actions are going to be and we cannot reverse those consequences once they have been set in motion. This human predicament defines – for Arendt – the vulnerability and fragility of the human condition. But against the unpredictability of human action she affirms the power of promise – the means by which we can make the world a little less unpredictable; and against the irreversibility of human action she affirms the power of forgiveness – the new beginning, the entirely new thing, the natality. So, we are irredeemably fragile, but through our collective action can make of our shared fragility a common world.

Higher Education and the Promise of New Beginnings: In the Footsteps of Hannah Arendt

I would like to focus our discussions on the educational implications of three major themes explo... more I would like to focus our discussions on the educational implications of three major themes explored throughout Arendt's work: plurality, promise and natality. Plurality, she argued, defines the human condition, which is characterised by both the freedom of the human agent and the unpredictability that necessarily results from the free interplay of human interaction. She further argued that binding promises – from the inter-personal to the interstate and potentially global – are the ways in which we protect ourselves from the unpredictability of the human condition while at the same time recognising one another as free agents. I shall put forward the view that the prime purpose of the university is to fulfil a particular promise: a promise, that is, to transfer the necessarily provisional and contestable inheritance of one generation to the next. But, in order to fulfil that promise, the university must recognise that each new generation – and each new individual within that generation – speaks back to previous generations with the unpredictability of new beginnings: or, in Arendt's terms, with an assurance of its own natality. The university, in other words, is both a bulwark against discontinuity and a space for the unpredictability of self-realisation.

Jon Nixon - Publications (Updated April 2022)

Jon Nixon - List of Publications

Review of Beattie Symbiotic Auitoethnography

Journal of Autoethnography, 4.2, April 2023

Jon Nixon Review of Lianna Beattie Symbiotic Autoethnography: Moving Beyond the Boundaries of Qua... more

Learning to lead for transformation: an African perspective on educational leadership

Jon Nixon (2022) Review of Learning to lead for transformations: an African perspective on educat... more

Education and intercultural identity: a dialogue between Zygmunt Bauman and Agostino Portera

Review of Education and intercultural identity: a dialogue between Zygmunt Bauman and Agostino Portera, 2022

A brief review for the Journal 'Comparative Education' of one of Bauman's last public conversation.