In common with other social policy contexts higher education has seen a plethora of new initiatives: from the Bologna Process at European level to smaller scale quality assurance and enhancement initiatives at national level. The imperatives of higher education policy seem to be above all about stimulating change and demonstrating the achievement of outcomes. In the fast-paced pattern of proposal, consultation, policy formulation, implementation and evaluation of policy initiatives there is rarely time to identify, let alone critically analyse and contest, underlying assumptions before funding is cut to make way for the next policy initiative. The purpose of the research workshop is first to examine an analytic framework that focuses on assumptive worlds in higher education at micro and macro levels. Second it will explore how (i) the concept of assumptive worlds and (ii) empirical investigation of micro and macro in tandem can illuminate participants' research questions. A paper will be made available to participants in advance on Educationonline and a summary and discussion questions will be used in the workshop.The analytic framework to be explored in this research workshop is part of a larger research project about the assumptive worlds of policy makers and practitioners in a humanities higher education context. This framework is predicated on Giddens' (1981) structuration theory which sees practice at micro and macro levels as mutually constitutive. Its purpose is therefore to describe the interplay between the assumptive worlds that exist at a micro level within a humanities department and those at a macro level in national policy-making agencies in the UK. The concept of assumptive worlds has been used by educationalists and political scientists to explore the role of ideas in the process of policy development. In the first substantial theoretical development of the concept of assumptive worlds Young (1977) defines it as 'subjective understandings of the environment in which they [policy-makers] operate' that includes 'an intermingling of belief and evaluation'. The proponents of the concept of assumptive worlds have tended to treat it within functionalist perspectives that represent these worlds as somewhat static. Placing the concept within a new theoretical frame (Giddens, 1981)) allows us to make sense of the relationship between the micro and the macro as one of constant interplay which takes place at individual and distributed levels, in tacit and explicit ways, and in formal and in informal ways.The concept of assumptive worlds has been adapted in the light of fieldwork at national policy level and at a local departmental level within a humanities department in a research-intensive university. Discourse analysis (Faircough,1989) has been used to construct dimensions of assumptive worlds that allow us to explore the interplay between them. For example, existential assumptions about time are evident in the two environments. At a national level transitoriness characterises initiatives, personnel, geographic location and even whole organisational structures. The constants are intrinsically dynamic such as the need for innovation because lots of things are being done for the first time. On the other hand at the local department offers a sense of permanence, security, established norms, and imperatives to justify existing practice and preserve existing resources. Existential assumptions about time have profound implications for how policy makers and practitioners conceive, and change the way they conceive, of their constituencies, of their own roles in higher education and of their relationships with each other.Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. Harlow, Longman. Giddens, A. (1981). Agency, institution and time-space analysis, Chapter 5 inKnorr-Cetina, K. and A. V. Cicourel (1981) Eds. Advances in social theory and methodology : toward an integration of micro- and macro- sociologies. Boston, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Young, K. (1977). "'Values' in the policy process." Policy and Politics 5(1): 1-22.