Maverick writer will be teaching students at Brunel University's school of the arts and its school of the social sciences

Since graduating from Oxford in the early 1980s, Will Self's career has been nothing if not diverse. He has swept streets, drawn cartoons and made cold calls; he has written as a maverick political journalist, a psycho-geographer, satirist and self-declared flâneur.

Now he is going back to university – this time in a role that marks his most respectable stage to date – as professor of contemporary thought at a London university, with licence to dream up new courses and research projects that reflect his eclectic interests.

Self takes up the new chair at Brunel University, in Uxbridge, west London, next week. He will be teaching undergraduate and post-graduate students at the university's school of the arts and its school of the social sciences.

He may contribute to courses on urban planning and human geography; he has written about the pleasures and hazards of exploring cities on foot. He may also teach a module on "psychoanalysis and contemporary society", echoing a theme of his fiction in which a psychiatrist is a recurring character. Self describes psychiatrists as occupying a "priestly role" between sanity and madness.

The university also expects him to contribute to the teaching of journalism and creative writing.

The author will have a role in increasing the university's engagement with the wider community, which will begin with a lecture on "urban psychosis" at the end of next month.

Self said his teaching would reflect preoccupations such as the relationship between people and geography. "I do think there are interesting things to be said about the relationship between different modes of transport, including pedestrianisation, and perceptions of the way the city has grown up, the way we experience it, and the impact of new technologies on that … I just think that architects should be made to walk."

He added that Brunel attracted him for "psycho-geographical reasons".

"It's very near to Heathrow, and there's a big British Asian community that has grown up around Southall. Take the last few weeks and all of this Dickens brouhaha, the bourgeoisie got themselves into an awful pother – 'why was he so great and we're so crap – where is the contemporary Dickens?' Maybe the contemporary Dickens is going to be a British Asian."

Self said he hoped his own writing would be influenced by his activities at Brunel.

Dany Nobus, Brunel's pro-vice chancellor, said the university is keen for Self to develop new ideas for research activities and teaching programmes that cross disciplinary boundaries.

He said: "We were incredibly impressed, not just by his intellectual background and range of interests but also by his commitment to university life.

"What we want to do is about crossing boundaries and also about taking the university beyond its own boundaries, opening things up towards the wider community."

Self said that he was joining Brunel at a parlous time for universities. He regards higher education as a sector under assault from a reductive view of universities as training for a future workforce.

"Just because the dominant metric seems to be that everything has to be costed in terms of how it contributes to the economic producers of the future doesn't mean that I can't critique that, and make that part of my teaching practice," the author said.

Self, 50, who is married to a Guardian journalist, Deborah Orr, is the author of eight novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and five collections of non-fiction. He studied politics, philosophy and economics at Exeter College, Oxford, graduating with a third.

In 1997, while covering the then prime minister John Major's campaign for re-election, he was fired by the Observer for allegedly taking heroin on the official aeroplane.

Brunel, founded in 1966 and named after the Victorian engineer, has another novelist on its staff: Fay Weldon was appointed chair of creative writing there in 2006.

Will Self on …

The Olympics

I think the Olympics suck dogshit through a straw. People believe they encourage da yoof to take up running, jumping and fainting in coils – but this is nonsense. They're a boondoggle for politicians and financiers … The stadia themselves are a folly. The new Westfield is a temple to moribund consumerism – in 10 years' time they'll all be cracked and spalled; a Hitlerian mass of post-pomo nonsense.

Drugs

I admire them from afar. I think the heavier hallucinogens are amazing. The problem with our society is there aren't enough positive drug rituals. I said this to the Archbishop of Canterbury the other night – the Church of England should introduce some sort of ecstasy communion.

The internet

The web – like any other emergent medium – is still inchoate. The claims of Mumsnet, Twitter etc to be intrinsically 'democratic' forces for good that have helped to bring down evil empires in Tehran, across the Middle East and now in Wapping are wholly specious.

The honours system

Defenders of the honours lunacy always point out that it isn't only crony capitalists and political placemen and women who are cloaked in ermine and topped-off with balls. But the odd ennobled social worker is no match for those furious oxymorons: the Labour lords – surely paradoxes on a par with fascist humanitarians or vegan hammerhead sharks.