Prof. Dr. Torgny Roxå serves as academic developer at the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University in Sweden since 1988, with a focus on Strategic Educational Development through a socio-cultural perspective. He has received Lund University award for distinguished pedagogical achievements and have been recognized as an Excellent Teaching Practitioner. For a period he acted as the external examiner for the Postgraduate Diploma in Learning and Teaching at Oxford University and is currently appointed Distinguished Scholar at McMaster University. Previously he served as Vice President for the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and as a visiting professor at Ulster University (Northern Ireland).
His research revolves around organisational culture in workgroups and departments in higher education organisations. The main message is that we need to better understand this meso level of our organisations to better take care of academic practices in a world of increased pressure from external stakeholder. Everything starts with the academics and how they talk to each other about students, teaching, and outcomes. Together with a colleague, Katarina Mårtensson, Prof. Dr. Torgny Roxå has studied academically strong microcultures at Lund University. Subsequent publications have advanced the initial findings in an attempt to better describe the variations among microcultures. In this he has been influenced by Etienne Wenger’s writings on communities of practice and by Elinor Ostrom’s work on commons.
Selected recent publications
Roxå, T., & Mårtenson, K. (2017). Agency and structure in academic development practices: are we liberating academic teachers or are we part of a machinery supressing them? International Journal for Academic Development, 22(2), 95 - 105.
Roxå, T., & Mårtensson, K. (2016). Developing higher education organisations and evaluating effects In R. Egger & M. Merkt (Eds.), Teaching Skills Assessments – Qualitätsmanagement und Personalentwicklung in der Hochschullehre (pp. 91 - 115). Wiesbaden: Springer.
Roxå, T., & Mårtensson, K. (2015). Microcultures and informal learning: a heuristic guiding analysis of conditions for informal learning in local higher education workplaces. International Journal for Academic Development, 20(2), 193 - 205. doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2015.1029929
Roxå, T., & Mårtensson, K. (2014). Higher education commons – a framework for comparison of midlevel units in higher education organizations. European Journal of Higher Education http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2014.924861
