Concept
Reader (academic rank)
Overview
The title of reader in universities in the United Kingdom and some countries in the Commonwealth of Nations such as India, Australia and New Zealand denotes an appointment for a senior academic with a distinguished international reputation for research or scholarship.
In the traditional hierarchy of British and other Commonwealth universities, reader (and principal lecturer in the new universities) is an academic rank above senior lecturer and below Chaired Professor. Comparatively speaking, a reader can be thought of as a professor but without a chair, similar to the distinction which can be found in universities in the United States, China (Hong Kong) and some parts of Europe.
The promotion criteria applied to a readership in the United Kingdom are similar to those applied to a professorship: advancing from senior lecturer to reader generally requires evidence of a distinguished record of original research.
Several UK universities have dispensed with the reader grade, such as the University of Oxford, and the University of Leeds in 2012; those currently holding readerships retain the title, but no new readers will be appointed. In the few UK universities, including the University of Cambridge, that have adopted North American academic titles (i.e. lecturer is equivalent to assistant professor; senior lecturer equivalent to associate professor; professor equivalent to professor), readerships have become assimilated to professorships.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
His courteous and conciliatory tone towards his reader is remarkable, and it must be partly this quality which revealed his personal sweetness of character to so many who had never seen him. I have always felt it to be a curious fact, that he who had altered the face of Biological Science, and is in this respect the chief of the moderns, should have written and worked in so essentially a non-modern spirit…
Charles Darwin, Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1
Names Reader several times; states what Reader is.
_And this, I suppose, is sufficient to make the Reader, not expect herein any smoothness of phrase or quaintness of Expression; what is here delivered in English is immediately taken, as it is naturally in the Original. The words, we hope, may be apposite enough, and fit to express what is here designed, and I think it a derogation from the Authors skill to draw the Picture of his mind in any other Colours, than…
René Descartes, Six metaphysical meditations
The chapter “TO THE READERS.” is titled for Reader; names Reader several times.
There are so many instances of this, that I think it justice to my reader and myself to conclude, that either my book is plainly enough written to be rightly understood by those who peruse it with that attention and indifferency, which every one who will give himself the pains to read ought to employ in reading; or else that I have written mine so obscurely that it is in vain to go about to mend it. Whichever of…
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
The chapter “READER,” is titled for Reader; names Reader several times.
Philosophers who discussed Reader (academic rank)
- Roger Scruton
- A. C. Grayling
- Roger Penrose
- Peter Geach
- Arthur Prior
- Colin McGinn
- W. K. C. Guthrie
- A. C. Ewing
- Howard Robinson
- Susan Stebbing
Related ideas
- Alan Turing
- India
- Professor
- Norway
- University of Cambridge
- United Kingdom
- University of Oxford
- Australia
- New Zealand
- Denmark
Place in the tradition
Part of A. C. Grayling.