I started my academic career at the University of Otago, where I was ushered into the academic community. These were a group of people with a calling. Being an academic was a vocation, what you are, not what you did. It was a commitment to learning and teaching that extended beyond the walls of the ivory tower and became part of your identity. You are an academic because of the way you approach the world and for your interactions both public and private.

The University, which is just a collection of academics with an infrastructure to support them, has as its charter to be the critic and conscience of society. To fill this role academics need to be safe to voice critical statements, express unpopular ideas, and ridicule the ridiculous without threat to their livelihood and family. This is why we have academic freedom, and why we defend it so vigorously. There is always a cost for freedom, a responsibility that is intertwined with rights. In this case it is the requirement to engage in public debates and to be an academic rather than just work as one.

This is a grand ideal, and not one that is common. This forum, and blogging in general, forms a small part of fulfilling our collective responsibility. I am glad to be joining a community of bloggers who have taken up the challenge of being public academics. To justify our position in society we must have a commitment to sharing knowledge, informing debate, and being active in the public sphere. Without this commitment we might as well be private research institutes where knowledge is owned and the benefits go to a company first and society second.

For my part I have relatively diverse interests. I have a PhD on the functional purpose of REM sleep, and I teach in computer game development. I have an active interest in medieval siege weapons, and augmented reality. In this forum I intend to post on these topics and many others. I look forward to feedback and being part of modernising the “grand academic ideal”.

Simon.