Event information

Frameworks of reference for academic freedom

Wednesday 2nd July 2025, 12:00-13:00 (BST)

This event is hosted by the Centre for Higher Education Transformations (CHET).

This event is also part of the School of Education's Bristol Conversations in Education (BCE) research seminar series. These seminars are free and open to the public.

Venue – Hybrid. Please find details on how to attend at the end of your order confirmation email.

Registration - Please register for this event on the Eventbrite page.

 

About the event

Speakers: Professor Liviu Matei (Professor of Higher Education & Public Policy, and Head of the School of Education, Communication & Society at King's College London)

How do we know what academic freedom is in concrete situations? How do we know what to do about it? And who is “we”? Academics only? Students and professional staff as well? Public authorities?  Courts and international organisations? 

Developed using a situated epistemology approach, the concept of frameworks of reference for academic freedom proves to have a remarkable heuristic value. It helps to identify, organize, analyse and understand an extensive array of concrete situations with regard to academic freedom involving divergent intellectual debates, battleground legal and regulatory tensions, dispiriting clashes but also remarkable positive developments at the institutional, national, regional and global level.   

Liviu Matei is a higher education scholar and university leader, currently Professor of higher education & public policy and Head of the School of Education, Communication & Society at King’s College London.

He has taught at universities across Europe, the U.S., and Asia, and has published extensively on university governance, academic freedom, funding, internationalization, quality assurance, and the history and politics of higher education.

He has led significant policy research projects for organizations including the Council of Europe, European Commission, World Bank, UNESCO, and the Nordic Council of Ministers, for national authorities and universities. He founded the Elkana Center for Higher Education and the Global Observatory on Academic Freedom.

He is a member of Academia Europaea and serves on the Board of Trustees of the American University of Central Asia, Magna Charta Universitatum Governing Council, and the Global Relations Advisory Group of the Swedish Association of Universities.