CGHE Webinar 76

Higher education and the UN’s sustainable development goals: the case of the intercultural universities in Mexico

Date: Thursday, 3 May 2018 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm

Location: Room 822, UCL Institute of Education

Speaker(s):

Tristan McCowan, IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society

In the framework of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, higher education has been given a key role in addressing societal challenges: reducing poverty, ensuring sustainable livelihoods and protecting the natural environment.

Yet there has been a singular lack of imagination as regards the institutional forms that might help support this vision.

This presentation reports on the findings of an exploratory study of the Intercultural University of Veracruz, one of a number of institutions created in Mexico to ensure access for indigenous populations, to promote local development and to provide a space for intercultural dialogue.

The findings show a number of ways in which this innovative institution provides opportunities for supporting the SDGs that go beyond conventional universities.

However, the study also presents challenges to the global framework, highlighting the lack of attention to culture, language, identity and knowledge traditions.

Finally, the presentation will reflect more broadly on the relationship between higher education and international development in the contemporary era.

Download the presentation

Professor Tristan McCowan

Tristan McCowan is Professor of International Education at the Institute of Education, University College London. His work focuses on higher education in the international context, including issues of access, curriculum, alternative models and sustainability. His CGHE Project 9 explored the supranational space in higher education – the ways in which this space is formed and developed above or beyond nation-states, the actors that form this space, and the resource and knowledge flows within this space, and between the national, regional, and supranational spaces.