The New Geopolitics of International Higher Education

22nd June 2021 : 14:00 - 15:00

Category: Webinar

Speaker: Emma Sabzalieva, UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education (IESALC) and York University, Canada; Lisa Brunner, University of British Columbia, Canada; Adam Grimm, Michigan State University, US

Location: Zoom webinar, registration required

Audience: Public

Events and trends of recent years are prompting critical transformations to the geopolitical landscape, with 2020 surely to be remembered as a watershed moment for global politics. This session explores how international higher education practices are being shaped by shifting political dynamics at the global level.

Emma Sabzalieva will draw on her work with Hannah Moscovitz, to make the case for the importance of investigating, both theoretically and empirically, the new geopolitics of international higher education. The talk will discuss how global politics come into conflict with international and internationalising higher education.

Lisa Brunner will present her work on ‘Higher education institutions as eyes of the state: Canada’s international compliance regime’, discussing the role of higher education in state surveillance practices and advancing the argument that this role is connected to historical patterns of higher education involvement in state and border imperialism.

Adam Grimm will discuss the paper (co-authored with Riyad Shahjahan) ‘Bringing the ‘nation-state’ to being: affect, methodological nationalism and globalisation of higher education’. Drawing on affect theory, the article shows how the ‘nation-state’ category comes into being through internationalisation practices at individual (faculty), national (state policies) and global scales (global ranking systems).

The presentations introduce the ongoing work of a forthcoming special issue in Globalisation, Societies and Education.

This webinar is part of the free public seminar programme hosted by the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).