Higher education (HE) today is a diversified area which has grown expansively over the last twodecades in response to a rapidly changing educational and political climate (e.g., Englund, 2018).In this age of complexity, development and change are omnipresent and intrinsic parts of theuniversity teacher’s practice, from the development of the teachers’ individual practice at microlevel, to the collaborative development of scholarly practice at the meso-level of the department,and to the strategic institutional approach at macro-level, which links to employment andpromotion frameworks and the recognition of teaching quality (Bolander Laksov & Scheja, 2020).As changing demands has placed focus on learning and teaching, higher education in Swedenhas followed the European development from quality assurance towards quality enhancement(e.g., Pelik, 2016; Nygren & Sjöberg, 2022). The universities are now responsible for developingtheir own quality assurance systems and more emphasis has been placed on ownership and thepossibilities of influencing the process (Swedish Higher Education Authority), which has grownmore complex. Through their professional teaching work, academic teachers are expected tostrengthen a pedagogical "culture of quality" at the higher education institution (e.g., Elken &Stensaker, 2018).

What we are witnessing is a more mature quality assurance work which is characterized byincreased trust in the universities themselves and the ways in which they choose to organize theirquality work. But we are also witnessing the heightened complexity of academic developmentwhere academic developers has become involved in work on all three levels (micro, meso,macro), for example, appointment procedures, career structures and promotion criteria.Academic developers have become central to the implementation of these strategies, which hasgreatly extended the range of their professional activities. This development goes hand in handwith the shift in focus from quality assurance to quality enhancement. By allowing the universitiesto develop their own quality assurance systems, the new quality assurance system signals aheightened awareness of the importance of ownership and to affect the process, which relatesto national governance strategies of teaching and learning. As the changing educational andpolitical demands on higher education have deeply affected the professional activities of theacademic developer and the academic teacher, this article addresses the changes andchallenges faced.

The present paper will present the results of a study of Swedish academic development unitsplanned to be conducted in early 2023 and which focus on the areas of responsibilities and29everyday practice of academic developers today. In the paper, we will discuss the implicationsfor teachers and academic developers in this diversified context. Our aim is also to contributewith further knowledge and understanding of structural and organisational prerequisites foracademic development in higher education.