Public Scholarship

What does it mean to be a scholar today, when democratic institutions are under siege and expertise is under attack? This volume brings together, for the first time, the personal stories and methodological reflections of twenty leading European scholar-practitioners who have chosen - sometimes at real professional cost - to engage beyond the walls of academia. Coming from law, political science, management, geography, and sociology, working across a dozen European countries, they share a common trajectory: the moment at which conventional scholarly practice proved insufficient. The volume names this practice 'public scholarship,' and extracts from it a grammar capable of being studied, taught, and institutionalised. It addresses the questions that matter most: What motivates public engagement? What methods work? How should impact be measured? And how can this practice be built without losing its transformative potential?