Leading sustainability in higher education

The paper presents preliminary findings from a small-scale research project on the experiences and changing identities of ‘ESD leaders’ in HE context. The key aims is to explore three interconnected ‘stories’ of 1) participants’ personal relationship with sustainability, 2) their experience of leading a specific sustainability focussed project, and 3) their conceptualisation of sustainability leadership and identity as an ESD leader. This is done via five narrative interviews with academics involved in ESD projects with curricular/pedagogic focus. The narrative approach reflects the conceptualisation of both sustainability and leadership as a ‘narrative enterprise’ involving meaning- and sense-making (Simkin, 2005; Handy, 1989) and ‘re-storying’ required for deep transformation (Herrick & Pratt, 2013). Theoretically, the project draws from and contributes to several areas of inquiry, including ‘general’ leadership studies, leadership research within HE context, particularly the increasing focus on distributed and informal leadership (e.g. Juntrasook et al, 2013; Bolden, Petrov & Gosling, 2008ab, 2009; Gosling, Bolden & Petrov, 2009), the broad education for sustainable development literature and the emerging sustainability leadership research.