Why teach research and research teaching? - Comparative view of the tensions between research and teaching in Europe's universities

Dr Rita Hordósy reflects on her Research Fellowship

Introduction

I joined the University of Nottingham in the autumn of 2019 as a Nottingham Research Fellow. My aim in the proposed project was to explore the research and teaching nexus in sociology departments across a number of European countries, building on my post-doctoral research (Clark & Hordósy, 2019). I planned to use curriculum documents, student and staff interviews as well as student enrolment data to give a rounded view whilst comparing between national contexts. The fellowship funding allowed me to lead on a large research project working with great colleagues and mentors, and a chance to return to what I love: internationally comparative research in higher education.  

Spanner in the works

However, instead of traveling across Europe in 2020, of course we entered the now infamous “new normal”.  My participants in Hungary, England and Norway were seemingly happy to be interviewed online about something other than the pandemic, hence some parts of the project still went ahead. The lack of travel opportunities freed up some of the funds to pursue several smaller scale desk-based projects, working with some amazing colleagues in the School of Education and beyond.

Outcomes and research directions

Comparing Norway, Hungary and England, the central concern remained the research/teaching interlink. Jointly with Jenny Norris, Betül Yasdiman and Asad Lashari, we explored curriculum documents to pinpoint 'research' in sociology BA degrees and illuminated how students at different stages of their studies see the process of sociological inquiry (Hordósy & Norris, 2022; Hordósy et al., under review). In other papers with Betül, Jenny and Gabriel Lee, we explored why students opt for the discipline of sociology outlining corresponding admissions patterns (Hordósy, Yasdiman & Norris. 2025), as well as how they imagine their future sociological selves  With Monica McLean, we analysed the fractured and precarious careers in academia in the context of the pandemic using administrative data and FOIs (Hordósy & McLean, 2022). Drawing on the Hungarian data, I am also writing about how sociology students and staff experience an illiberal regime and attacks on academic freedom.

A slightly tangential, but nonetheless fruitful research direction focuses on the geographies of knowledge production in academic publishing, exploring international journals regarding the interplay of the centre-periphery relations as observed within the journal aims, editorial boards and author networks (Brown et al., 2025; Lee & Hordósy, manuscript). Indeed, jointly with Martin Myers, Elizabeth Brown and Anto Vega Castillo, we recently finalised a research report that explores editorial board workings in the field of higher education, funded by the Society for Research into Higher Education. A long list of talks shows that we have been busy in disseminating the results more broadly, for instance at a recent Centre for Global Higher Education conference and an online departmental seminar for Lancaster University. Similarly, I presented the outcomes at a range of Norwegian and Hungarian universities in 2024.

Epilogue

If her project started in 2019, why are papers surfacing only now? – you might think. Well, some other priorities took precedence: I have been rather busy building Brio layouts and taking my son born in 2021 to parks and cafés.