Research on leadership and management in higher education has increased in volume and range in the last 30 years, but is still a relatively new and specialist domain that has a locus both in education and management sciences. This brief overview will focus on leadership and will first identify some of the main research paradigms and associated issues in the body of work published in this period. Second, it will identify the main theories and key insights from the research, drawing on the important work of Bensimon et al (1989) and Kezar et al (2006) in particular. Third, it will highlight some specific pieces of research that have informed the practice of leadership, governance and management; this work draws largely on research commissioned by the Leadership Foundation in the UK.