Leading in the eye of the storm: Reflections on chairing a global seminar

Dr Tanya Hathaway, one of LITE's Research Team, reflects on chairing the SRHE Event, 'Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in Times of Crisis', held online, Monday 5th June 2026.

There are moments in academic life that crystallise why you do what you do. Chairing the Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE) Learning, Teaching and Assessment Network seminar on *Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in Times of Crisis* was one of those moments for me.

This wasn't simply an online event I attended — it was the culmination of sustained scholarly work, international collaboration, and a genuine commitment to understanding how educational leadership holds up under pressure. The seminar was convened by the SRHE Learning, Teaching and Assessment Network group, Professor Namrata Rao (Liverpool Hope University), Dr Emily Danvers (University of Sussex), and Professor Alex Owen (Ulster University). I had the privilege of chairing the session and closing the day.

The seminar grew directly from a forthcoming book I have co-edited with Professor Namrata Rao and Professor Ian Kinchin (University of Surrey), published by Bloomsbury in August 2026. The volume draws together contributors from Australia, Hong Kong, Lebanon, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, South America, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

As an online event, the logistics alone were no small feat. Coordinating speakers across wildly different time zones — from early morning starts in North America to late evening commitments in Australasia — required careful planning and goodwill from everyone involved. But that logistical challenge was itself a reflection of something intentional: the speakers were chosen precisely because they represent leaders of teaching and learning from across the globe and its continents. The diversity of representation wasn't incidental — it was central to what we were trying to achieve.

That global reach matters. Crisis doesn't present itself uniformly. Political upheaval, environmental catastrophe, institutional disruption — these land differently depending on geography, culture, and context. Part of my career as both researcher and pedagogical leader has been learning to hold that complexity without flattening it.

What struck me most, across the three hours, was how consistently the conversation moved between two registers: the deeply pedagogical and the unmistakably strategic. The keynote speaker, Professor Stephen Marshall, used the framework of Black and Grey Swans to reframe crisis not as an exception but as a permanent condition of institutional life — and argued that what universities need is not crisis management, but genuine adaptive capacity. That insight sits at the intersection of teaching philosophy and senior leadership in ways I find both challenging and generative.

Political upheaval, environmental catastrophe, institutional disruption — these land differently depending on geography, culture, and context. Part of my career as both researcher and pedagogical leader has been learning to hold that complexity without flattening it.

Keynote Professor Kasturi Behari-Leak's concept of 'leaderful leadership' — collective, relational, values-driven — offered perhaps the most compelling reframing of the day. It named something we often observe repeatedly in practice: that the most effective academic leaders in times of crisis are not those who project command, but those who build communities of shared purpose. This is as true in the seminar room as it is in the senior leadership team.

Professor Alison Cook-Sather's concluding keynote, an account of sustaining equity-focused pedagogical partnership through a pandemic, political attacks on DEI, and structural racism, was a powerful reminder that teaching is never merely technical. At its most serious, it is an ethical and political act.

Between the keynotes, a rich panel of five snap presentations brought the lived, contextual reality of crisis leadership into sharp focus. Dr Lee Mackenzie and Dr Deisy Alexandra Becerra Martel (South America) examined Addressing Inequality in Higher Education During a Time of Crisis: A View from the Global South; Professor Susan Rowland (Australia) reflected on "Distributed" Leadership in Times of Crisis; Dr Bassem Kandil and Professor Patricia Rached (Lebanon) shared Addressing Teaching and Learning Challenges: The Case Study of a Lebanese University; Dr Kibbie Naidoo and the late Dr Hemali Joshi (South Africa) presented Leading Learning and Learning to Lead in Times of Crisis; and Dr Kiruthika Ragupathi and Dr Adrian Lee (Singapore) explored Leading Academic Development in Times of Uncertainty and Crisis. Taken together, these five perspectives, spanning inequality, distributed leadership, hybrid pedagogy, ethics of care, and institutional transformation, demonstrated just how much serious, practice-grounded scholarship is being generated at the intersection of crisis and educational leadership across the globe.

What emerged most powerfully across the whole programme was something that sits at the heart of our research: that the strongest leaders of teaching and learning in times of crisis are not those who go it alone, but those who build around them. Collaboration isn't a concession to difficulty; it is, in fact, a hallmark of quality leadership, at every level.

If these questions resonate with you, I'd encourage you to look out for our book, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in Times of Crisis - edited by myself, Professor Namrata Rao, and Professor Ian Kinchin, and published with Bloomsbury in August 2026. It is aimed squarely at those navigating the intersection of pedagogical leadership and senior academic leadership in practice, offering not just theoretical frameworks but honest, grounded accounts from institutions across the world of how it actually looks to lead teaching and learning well when everything is under pressure. It is a timely book given the current crises being experienced in the higher education sector.

I'll be reflecting further on the individual sessions and the conversations that followed in due course. But for now, I leave with a renewed sense of purpose and deep respect for the scholars and practitioners doing this work, seriously and well, across the world.