This article illustrates how theories encountered within academic professional development (particularly new lecturer programmes) can be applied to subject knowledge from outwith the Education discipline. It is argued that matters relating to present day teaching and learning can influence readily identifiable issues under scrutiny in other disciplines, particularly within the Arts and Humanities. Examination of the interface between the concept of audience in one discipline, in this case early medieval history, and phenomenography and discipline genres, provides an example of the way in which academic staff training may affect the participants' subsequent perceptions of not only how to teach, but also how to think about their own subject.