Launch of New Book on Community Based Research and Higher Education
Edited by Professor Ronnie Munck (DCU in the Community) and Colleaques
This book was recently launched at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin.
The attendants were welcomed by the President of the RIA, Professor Mary Daly. She said ‘it is a great privilege to host the launch this book which represents an important step forward for higher education in Ireland in recognising the value of community based research’
In his speech launching the book to a packed hall, Muiris O’Connor, Head of Policy and Planning at the Higher Education Authority of Ireland said that:
“I am honoured to have been invited to launch Higher Education and Community-Based Research today and congratulate the editors and all of the contributors on their achievement. The book will raise the profile of community-based research internationally, and support the engagement of the higher education community with the key challenges of our times.
We need universities to be devoted to helping us to solve our problems of living—above all, our global problems—in more effective, intelligent and humane ways. But universities at present are devoted to the pursuit of ‘knowledge’ and technological know-how, not to helping humanity learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in more co-operatively rational ways. The key crisis of our times is the failure of our universities to help us learn how to make progress towards a better world.
We must not under-estimate the rich potential for the collective advancement of knowledge by higher education institutions in partnership with wider society through the pooling of expertise and experience. The locus of the value of higher education as a public good is in its intersection with society, and it is by focusing on the development of the mission of higher education in this space that, as the book powerfully argues, the commodification of higher education can most effectively be countered.
Higher Education and Community-Based Research is an important book for academics, for institutional managers, and for policy-makers at a time of transformative change for the higher education sector internationally, deconstructing the dichotomies—between the university and society; enterprise engagement and civic engagement; and research and teaching—which all too often inhibit strategic development at both institutional and national levels. Community-based research is an area of great potential for all higher education institutions which are strongly rooted in their local communities, as well as for internationally renowned research-led institutions.”
