The Head of the Danish School of Education (DPU), Aarhus University, underscored how deeply impressed he was with CHEF’s achievements when the first phase of our work (2017-2020) was evaluated in April 2020. He was especially impressed with the ways we have worked with our networks of inter/national contacts to develop projects and publications, foster researcher communities, and influence research and institutional agendas. CHEF’s continuation for a further two years (2020-2022) has been approved.

CHEF’s co-directors, Søren Bengtsen and Sue Wright would like to thank colleagues at Aarhus University, and more widely in Denmark and internationally for the generous and inspiring ways you have collaborated in CHEF talks, panels, projects, visits and exchanges. Your contribution is key to the momentum, range and scope of CHEF’s work.

During the evaluation, our leaders prompted us to come up with a ‘profile’ or strap line and we said CHEF develops critical research that has outcomes in practice and policy.

We have two main ways that we will be pursuing this in the next period

1.       Through co-establishing the ‘Higher Education Policy and Practice’ (HEPP) special interest group within the Danish Network for Educational Development in Higher Education (DUN) which invites members from throughout Denmark. It will focus on research integrity, academic freedom and citizenship in the first instance, with members generating further issues in due course. Through this work, CHEF will contribute to connecting a variety of higher education stakeholders within Denmark including researchers, teachers, academic developers, institutional leaders, and external organisations and institutions.

2.       Through the project ‘European Universities – Critical Futures’ which is networking researchers across Europe and more widely to develop new research agendas and dialogue with policy makers on three main areas: the future roles of universities in European society; in European higher education and research integration; and in Europe in a changing world context. 

We will continue to build up the fruitful exchanges with ‘sister centres’ internationally and it will be an even stronger priority for CHEF to engage with the policy community and university leadership in order to influence not only research agendas but curricular, educational, and societal agendas as well.

Our full range of activities will be continuing, and to maintain our community building with all of you, the next CHEF talk will take place online, so that both our national and international members may participate (please visit our events site for further updates on the autumn 2020 programme). We welcome any comments on our evaluation document and your continued involvement in CHEF.

Read the full evaluation of CHEF