AHUA Winter 2026 Reading List
We recently invited AHUA members and friends across the sector to share their book recommendations, allowing us to pull together a reading list that is mainly made up of personal development literature but with a bit of a twist that members may want to read during a well-earned period of winter rest.
1. The New Power University: The Social Purpose of Higher Education in the 21st Century by Jonathan Grant
Recommended by AHUA Executive Director, Ben Vulliamy, who states: This is a really interesting exploration of values and community based strategy and decision making. Grant puts social responsibility and purpose at the core of university mission and in ways that help them adapt to the modern policy context.
2. Govern Agility by Phil Gadzinski and Tony Ponton
Another recommendation from Ben:
Lessons and theory from Australian corporate governance but routed in ideas of organisational conscience and integrity. They simplify complex ideas in easy to explore ways and all with a focus on creating a balance between urgency and quality.
3. The New University: Local Solutions to a Global Crisis by James Coe
Coincidently, this was recommended by James Coe.
Blurb:
The New University posits a blueprint of action through universities intersecting with work, offering opportunity, and operating within the physical space they find themselves. Diving into the issues he aims to tackle in his own work as a senior policy advisor, Coe believes we can utilise universities for community betterment through realigning research to communal benefit,
adopting outreach into the hardest to reach communities, using positional power to purchase better, and using culture to draw people together in a fractured society. The world has changed, and universities must change too. The New University is the start.[1]
4. Cow Country by Adrian Jones Pearson
Recommended by Paul Greatrix, Director of Higher Education Consultancy at Shakespeare Martineau
Paul stated:
A campus novel I am keen to re-read over the festive period is Cow Country by Adrian Jones Pearson. An outstanding educational satire Cow Country follows an increasingly sleep-deprived educational administrator as he tries to help Cow Eye Community College through its critical accreditation process. Charlie is the new Special Projects Co-ordinator and beyond accreditation
he is tasked with re-uniting a starkly divided campus community and organising the staff Christmas Party. Featuring a series of absurd and comedic scenarios this is a very entertaining and thoroughly strange campus novel. Highly recommended for taking your mind off how challenging things are in the UK HE sector right now.
5. ‘Anything’ by Michael Crow at ASU was recommended by Joan Concannon, Chief Reputation and Stakeholder Relations Officer at University of York.
Some of Crow’s most notable works include Public Values Leadership: Striving to Achieve Democratic Ideals, The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education and Designing The New American University.
Crow has a remarkable career working in leadership roles within higher education and government in the USA:
He is guiding the transformation of ASU into one of the nation’s leading public metropolitan research universities, an institution that combines the highest levels of academic excellence, inclusiveness to a broad demographic, and maximum societal impact—a model he designed known as the “New American University.”
Under his leadership ASU has established major interdisciplinary research initiatives such as the Biodesign Institute, Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS), and more than a dozen new transdisciplinary schools, and witnessed an unprecedented academic infrastructure expansion, quadrupling of research expenditures, and attainment of record levels of diversity in the student body.[2]
6. Surviving and Thriving in Higher Education Professional Services – A Guide to Success by Rachel Reeds
Reviewed by incoming AHUA Chair, Helen Galbraith earlier this year. Helen wrote: Rachel Reeds deserves congratulations for bringing together such a comprehensive guidebook, which would be a useful addition to any office bookshelf. I would certainly recommend it as an engaging and insightful read for AHUA colleagues.
7. Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth by Derrick Bell
Ben’s final recommendation: Challenges any sense that leadership ambition is selfish or about personal gain and instead aligns leadership to ethics and societal growth.
Thank you to all who contributed their recommendations, your insights helped shape this extensive and compelling reading list for the festive break.
We wish you a well-deserved rest and look forward to returning in 2026.
[2] Amazon.com: Michael M. Crow: books, biography, latest update
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