Irish Academy of Management Spring Event on Academic Service

Formally referring to our role as academics in contributing to our community and society, academic service can mean anything, and everything, from informal discreet support and guidance to students and colleagues, to serving on committees and boards within and beyond your university, running conferences, reviewing papers, contributing to our town/ city, region, national policy. It may mean activism, giving voice to those who are traditionally silenced, or to our new members of academia, lobbying for their full inclusion in our community and in society. Intermittently, it may require generosity, integrity, discretion, patience, gratitude and bravery; drawing on a blend of heart, mind and soul… reaching beyond intellect and our professional selves, and into our role as a global citizen.

Despite its fundamental role in upholding the integrity of the Academy and in giving it true meaning, Academic Service is sometimes seen as the poor relation of Funding, Teaching, Impact and Research. Countering this perspective, I argue that Academic Service value extends beyond such rhetoric and rudimentary measurement, and offers a contribution to our community and society that reaches beyond our own, and academia’s immediate gain.

In this session, we explore what does academic service mean to you? We consider whether one’s every contribution should be recorded in what can be a deeply competitive, individualistic profession. Acknowledging the role of Academic Service in our self and professional development, we will discuss its value to you as an early career academic and as a person. Drawing on these insights, we will consider how one might build and sustain an authentic approach to academic service throughout your career.

Guest Speaker Bio

Felicity Kelliher is Professor of Management Practice and academic lead of the BRIM- RIKON research centre at the Faculty of Business, SETU Ireland, where she lectures in management practice, leadership, change and innovation. An experienced principal investigator, research supervisor and mentor, Felicity specialises in action research and longitudinal interpretive case methods; studying management capability development in micro, small and medium sized enterprise (MSME) with a particular interest in rural business. A Fulbright alum, Felicity has engaged with over 1200 SMEs in service innovation, capability development and learning initiatives and was awarded the Knowledge Transfer Ireland Research2Business Collaborative Impact award in 2015 in recognition of this work. She works closely with colleagues in Ireland, Europe and North America on a number of funded research projects and regularly contributes to management theory through publication in top tier international journals. Felicity contributes to academic and practice communities in a variety of national and international roles, and is a past chair of the Irish Academy of Management.