Senior lecturer - Definition and Overview

Lecturer is the name given to university teachers in most of the English-speaking world (but not at most universities in the US or Canada) who do not hold a professorship.

United Kingdom

Lecturers are generally divided into Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, and Principal Lecturers/Readers and are permanent positions in a university which involve carrying out both teaching and research. These positions are generally comparable to "Assistant", "Associate", and "Full" Professors, respectively, under the US system, with the title "Professor" being reserved for only the most senior academics in the UK, and roughly equivalent to a chaired professorship in the US. Most lecturers have Ph.D.s, and in many fields this is a pre-requisite of the job.

United States

Some American universities have Lecturers whose responsibility is undergraduate education, especially for introductory courses that attract hordes of students. These lecturers generally do not have research duties, and the position is sometimes regarded as less prestigious than a professorship. It may not require a doctoral degree, depending on the university (see the article, "professor")

See also

• Academic rank
• Professor