Abstract:
The emergence of academic development as a mode of institutional and/or academic and/or human capital building activity in universities is a relatively recent development in the history of Western universities. Nevertheless, in the twenty-first century, academic development has become a central, though contested, part of the business of most higher education institutions. Despite this, the work of academic development in the contemporary university is beset with tensions that arise from the academic autonomy at the heart of an academic's identity. Using different kinds of history making, this article takes a case-study approach to explore the beginnings of academic development at the University of Auckland. Together the divergent accounts provided by the three forms of history serve to illustrate that the tensions that attend academic development today were evident at its beginnings.
