Description: Science and the university are changing. New roles are being demanded, new skills are required, new modes of knowledge production are emerging; a renewed relationship with society is taking form. The question we pursued is related with the way academics are dealing with these changes. Are they becoming "state-susidezed entrepreneurs" (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997) or "managed professionals" (Rhoades, 1998, as cited in Ylijoki, 2003)? Is "the way that most academics think about themselves and their role" (Parker & Jary, 1995, p. 329) changing as well? Or are they maintaining their ways of thinking and acting, despite of the changes (Calvert, 2001)? We don't believe in a single answer, but in diverse ways of experiencing science and the university (Barry, Chandler & Clark, 2001; Subotszhy, 1999; Trowler, 1998; Ylijoki, 2003).This study aimed at exploring the way academics conceive scientific knowledge and its process of production and validation, given its' centrality in the scope of the activities of inquiry and education developed by these professionals. Besides identifying the epistemological conceptions of academics, it was our purpose to examine the differences and similarities between those conceptions and to analyse the internal structure of the detected conceptual diversity. Methodology: A selection of Views on Science-Technology- Society (Aikenhead, Ryan & Fleming, 1989) items was used to assess the conceptions of academics from different scientific fields about the nature of scientific knowledge and its ways of production and justification. Data from 127 academics from the University of Azores (representing 52.8% of the population) was submitted to a multiple correspondence analysis followed by an hierarchical classification (SPAD 3.5). From these results, ten teachers were selected for maximum variety in their personal epistemologies - positions about the nature of knowledge - and invited to open-ended interviews about their knowledge production practices both in research and teaching. Interviews were video recorded and then transcribed verbatim. The data was analysed using a phenomenographic approach (Marton, 1981, 1988, 1994). Conclusions: Five qualitatively distinct ways of experiencing the scientific enterprise were delimited: the metecs in science, a cooperative game of strategy, a global database, an individual asceticism or a social contract. From the same analysis, five conceptions about the essence of the scientific knowledge also emerged: methodological certification, approximations by default, ethical authentication, tentative interpretations or informed ideations.The structural analysis of both sets of conceptions allowed disclosing the dimensions in function of which the conceptions are differentiated. It also added a considerable individual and intra-individual diversity to the epistemological plurality detected, besides suggesting a multiform pragmatic ideal of epistemological sophistication.These outcomes are discussed in terms of the coexistence of epistemological sub-cultures in current Higher Education or of even more specific "ideological" fragmentations. The communication between these sub-cultures is questioned in light of the results. Implications of the detected epistemological plurality are also discussed in the context of present days, when Europe is changing both economical and socially, the Society of Knowledge demands new missions from the universities and the declaration of Bologna revolutionizes the concept and the organization of Higher Education.