Vortragender

Abstract – Kurzbiografie – Publikationen 

Hon. Prof. Dr. Jon Nixon, University of Sheffield, UK

"Universities as Deliberative Spaces: Learning to Reason Together"

Almost all the problems we now face are collective problems – problems, that is, that cannot be resolved by individuals working in isolation. The global inter-connectivity of human life means that working together towards collective solutions is much more difficult and much more crucial than it was in the past. Our networks of inter-connectivity are no longer knowable and bounded communities, but boundless spaces the full communicative potential of which is unknowable. The emphasis on technical know-how (‘techne’) and propositional knowledge derived from theory (‘theoria’) ill-prepares us for confronting the collective problems we are experiencing and the collective solutions we are seeking. In this lecture I argue not only that we can learn to reason together, but that we must learn to reason together – and, crucially, that the university is one of the places within which this essential capability of deliberation, or what Aristotle termed ‘phronesis’, can and must be sustained and developed.

Short Biography

Jon Nixon has held professorial posts in four UK institutions of higher education and is currently Honorary Professor of Educational Studies, University of Sheffield, UK. His writing focuses on the institutional conditions for educational and professional renewal. His publications include Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education: Arendt, Berger, Said, Nussbaum and their Legacies (New York and London: Continuum, 2012), Higher Education and the Public Good: Imagining the University (New York and London: Continuum, 2011), Towards the Virtuous University: the Moral Bases of Academic Practice (New York and London: Routledge, 2008). He has edited (with Bob Adamson and Feng Su) The Reorientation of Higher Education: Beyond Compliance and Defiance (The University of Hong Kong Comparative Education Research Centre /Springer, 2012) and (with Melanie Walker) Reclaiming Universities from a Runaway World (Maidenhead and New York: Open University Press/McGraw Hill, 2004). He is a contributor to The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto for Resistance (London: Pluto Press, 2011). He is currently working on a study of ‘radical friendship’ as it relates to the life and work of Hannah Arendt. 

Further information: http://www.jonnixon.com/

Selected publications (relevant to the lecture)

• Nixon, J. (2011): Higher Education and the Public Good: Imagining the University, London and New York: Continuum.
• Nixon, J. (2011): Universities and the common good, in R. Barnett (ed) The Future University: Ideas and Possibilities. London and New York: Routledge
• Nixon, J. (2011): Re-imagining the public good, in M. Bailey and D. Freedman (eds) The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto for Resistance. London: Pluto Press
• Nixon, J. (2008): Towards the Virtuous University: the Moral Bases of Academic Practice, London and New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group
• Nixon, J. (2004): Learning the language of deliberative democracy, in M. Walker and J. Nixon (eds) Reclaiming Universities from a Runaway World. Maidenhead and Philadelphia: Open University Press/McGraw-Hill Education.