The New Geopolitics of International Higher Education
- 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
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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.
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Emma Sabzalieva, PhD, is a Senior Policy Analyst at UNESCO’s International Institute for Higher Education (IESALC) and a Research Associate at York University, Canada. Her current research projects include the futures of higher education, post-pandemic student mobility, geopolitics of higher education, and the international education-immigration policy nexus.
Lisa Brunner is a PhD candidate in Educational Studies and a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant. She currently studies the intersection of mobility and education. Previously, Lisa researched refugee settlement experiences in Canada and the USA. She holds an MA in Geography and a BA in Political Science and English Literature.
Adam Grimm is a scholar-practitioner who how the cross-border mobility and relevant policies at the institutional and national level. Utilizing primarily qualitative methods, he explores the stories and experiences of individuals as related to their transnational positionalities to learn how their worlds, spanning boarders, are socially constructed in undefined and often contested spaces.
