The rise of neo-collegiality: how shifting notions of expertise are reconfiguring collegial practice in higher education

Collegiality is often portrayed as a declining principle of academic life in contemporary higher education, progressively displaced by managerialism and external steering. This conceptual article argues that such an account overlooks a more subtle transformation: collegiality is not disappearing but being reconfigured by profound shifts in the nature of expertise and the renegotiation of legitimacy that follows. The paper first clarifies the multidimensional nature of collegiality, encompassing formal governance arrangements, everyday peer relations, and the collective production and validation of knowledge, before identifying the internal and external challenges reshaping them. It then develops an analytical framework of neo-collegiality, defined as a hybrid configuration emerging from the dynamic interaction between evolving forms of expertise and their corresponding bases of legitimacy. Central to this framework is a knowledge-centred dimension that does not simply add to, but actively reorients, the governance and social dimensions of collegiate life. Neo-collegiality reframes institutional change in universities as an active reconfiguration rather than a decline, moving analysis beyond the collegiality-managerialism dichotomy. The paper concludes by outlining a research agenda offering scholars and institutional leaders a renewed analytical language for navigating the transformations reshaping higher education.