ABSTRACT
Although Margaret Price noted, ‘For thousands of years the academe has been understood as a bastion of reason, the place in which one's rational mind is one's instrument’ (2010: 8), paradoxically, universities have benefited from the contributions of men and women whose intellectual capacity has also engaged with instability and erratic genius. Thinkers like John Forbes Nash Jr., Kurt Gödel, Ludwig Boltzmann, Max Weber, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sylvia Plath and Neil Cole have all made extensive and profound contributions to the academe. They represent part of a rich neurodiversity that has proven both beneficial and problematic to academic values and the research journeys they support.
This chapter considers normative assumptions about academics and our role as educators in supporting the growth of thinkers within universities. Drawing on two case studies, one of a postgraduate student and one of a tenured staff member, the chapter proposes a number of strategies that may be employed to support the development of productive, research environments within the academy. The chapter also posits a framework for legitimising and advancing diverse approaches to thinking so both the research journeys of emerging and experienced academics and the pedagogical approaches that support them are developed in co-creative, valuing and trustful ways.
