This book explores the concept of resilience in higher education through the diverse perspective of academic development practices. It asks us to consider the complexity of the systems in which academic developers work, and the varied ways in which academic development practices can support, and build, resilience across these systems.

Higher education can be complex to navigate for students, academics and developers. Significant recent upheavals including reduced university funding, broadening student participation and the disruption from digital technologies, add to this complexity, amid global political and climate instability. Along with the recent disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, these issues challenge the ways in which we understand fairness, equity and opportunity in teaching and learning spaces, and across higher education more broadly. Ideas around how to support the resilience of higher education workers, educators and students are becoming more commonplace. This volume explores a range of perspectives on how we may view resilience in higher education, and the ways in which the work of academic developers can contribute to, and is situated within, resilient university systems.

This book was originally published as a special issue of International Journal for Academic Development.