Anne Pirrie is a Reader in Education at the University of the West of Scotland. Formerly a contract researcher, Anne is a generalist with an eye for the particular. Her recent book Virtue and the Quiet Art of Scholarship: reclaiming the university (2019) explores the conditions for human flourishing in an environment blighted by managerialism. She considers her role as a teacher in the same terms as Nan Shepherd (1893-1981), the author of The Living Mountain: to try to prevent a few of the students who pass through the institution from conforming altogether to the approved pattern.