This paper re‐examines intellectual leadership in Higher Education by asking the following questions: What is intellectual leadership? Does intellectual leadership imply a position of formal authority and power? What patterns can be observed in the career paths of intellectual leaders? Does cumulative advantage in science automatically pave the way for intellectual leadership? What hinders women and minority scholars from taking on intellectual leadership in their epistemic communities? Drawing on discussions in the literature of the previous decade, the inquiry aims to re‐energise dialogue that is essential for resistance to anti‐intellectualism and proletarianisation in academe.

Interviewing senior professors in universities is a common qualitative method of conducting leadership research on higher education. Like other types of elite interviews, researching established scholars can create multiple challenges for emerging researchers because of power differences. Feminist research ethics offer principles to tackle these issues by focusing on power, boundaries and relationships in the research process. This study is based on the methodological reflections of my doctoral project: investigating intellectual leadership of 22 women full professors in Hong Kong. I argue that feminist research ethics benefit new researchers by addressing some dilemmas of elite interviews, including how to define elite participants, how to gain access, how to prepare for interviews and how to interact effectively. This empirical study sheds light on feasible practices of interviewing elite women scholars from the perspective of feminist approaches.

A considerable number of Chinese postgraduate students with strong academic and professional competences choose to stay abroad, despite the Chinese government’s success in attracting many overseas students. The paper explores the main considerations of these highly qualified non-returnees in choice-making between staying in the host country and returning home after graduation. The paper uses the Push-Pull framework to analyze online interview data with 12 participants. A hybrid “opportunity-constraint” heuristic has been extracted, and three types of Chinese overseas postgraduate students’ identities as stayers, nomads, and future returnees have been displayed. They emphasized career and individual development spaces, including access to different career choices, professional development, favorable social environment and lifestyle, and cultural recognition. This paper outlines the connection of Chinese students’ identity changes through international learning and decision making, provides insights for further analysis of the “brain drain,” “brain gain,” and “brain circulation.”

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