This book outlines ways for universities to become more placeful, fostering an atmosphere of diversity, inclusion, dissensus, and creativity within the university. It argues that only by becoming more placeful can universities establish genuine connections with surrounding environments, communities, and ecologies.

The book addresses the spatial context within which contemporary universities find themselves. The chapters include various methodological approaches, including case studies, autoethnography, philosophical essays, participant observation, poetic narration, and in-depth interviews, reflecting the variety of spatial configurations in which contemporary universities find themselves, and conceptually linked to the normative dimension implied in the notion of a “placeful university".

This book captures the breadth and depth of spatial perspectives on the contemporary university within an interdisciplinary context. It shows that spatial perspectives might be approached through various methodological instruments, promising interesting insights. Readers with different disciplinary backgrounds and those interested in different issues will gain a deeper understanding of the spatial background of respective perspectives and issues.

Giorgi Tavadze is Professor of Practical Philosophy at Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University (Tbilisi, Georgia). His main research areas are philosophy of education, postcolonial studies, social and political philosophy, history of ideas, and philosophical geography. He is also a member of the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society (PaTHES)

Paul Gibbs is Emeritus Professor of Middlesex University where he was founder of the Centre for Education Research and Scholarship. He holds or has held visiting  professorships at East European University, Georgia,  at UTS Sydney and at Azerbaijan University. His is a fellow of ATLAS (Texas University) and of the Centre for Higher Education Policy, New College Oxford. He is an educator and researcher, having taught notions of transdisciplinarity alongside social realism and Heideggerian hermeneutics, and has over thirty successful transdisciplinary professional doctorate students. He has published over thirty peer reviewed books on topics ranging from the marketing of higher education to vocationalism and higher education, and has published more than hundred academic articles and chapters. He is also the founding series editor of SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education.

Davydd J. Greenwood is the Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Anthropology Emeritus. Between 1970 to 2014, he was a member of the Department of Anthropology and the Program on Science, Technology, and Society at Cornell University. He served as the Director of the Einaudi Center for International Studies (1983-1995) and as Director of the Institute for European Studies (2000-2008). He was President of the Association of International Education Administrators in 1993-94. He chaired the American Council on Education Task Force on the Reauthorization of Title VI of the Higher Education Act. Elected a Corresponding Member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in 1996, he has authored, co- authored, edited, or co-edited 15 books and scores of articles on the anthropology of Spain, universities, and action research for democratic organizational change.

Søren S. E. Bengtsen is Professor of Universities and Higher Education at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. Also, at Aarhus University, he is the Co-Director of the research centre ‘Centre for Higher Education Futures’ (CHEF). Bengtsen serves as the Co-President of the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society (PaTHES), and as Chair of the Danish Network for Educational Development in Higher Education (DUN).