Dr Lee Rensimer
Lee Rensimer is a Lecturer in Education Studies at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society and a Deputy Director of CGHE. He was previously a Research Associate on CGHE Project 9, ‘Mapping supranational higher education space’, and continues to work with the co-investigators of that project on the geopolitics of regional higher education spaces.
Lee’s research on CGHE Project 9 was twofold. One stream (with Prof Tristan McCowan, UCL) investigated the international flows of ‘aid’ or funding to higher education systems, academics and students in the Global South. This project took stock of the publicly available data and their gaps, while also critically assessing the major practices and priorities of donors. The findings from this stream were recently published in CGHE working paper 97, which unsettles assumptions around international support to HE and offers a novel approach to conceptualising and empiricising aid flows.
The second stream (with Prof Rachel Brooks, Oxford) considered the role of various higher education actors in shaping the European higher education space. This work examined actors’ diverse perspectives on emerging university alliances formed through the European Universities Initiative (EUI) as well as their responses to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, reflecting competing spatial imaginaries of Europe and of the borders and substance of its HE space. Findings from this stream have been published in three co-authored articles to date, with further work on EUI students forthcoming.
CGHE research projects
Upcoming Events
Past Events
- Brazil’s transition to donor partner in higher education and science: a distinctive South-South Cooperation rationale?
- Challenging the “single story” in a multiplex world: nuancing conceptualisations of aid and partnership in the higher education sector
- Rethinking The Geopolitics Of Higher Education
- CGHE Annual Conference 2024 – The Future of Higher Education
- CGHE Annual Conference 2023 – From Higher to Tertiary: Democratising Post-School Education
- CGHE Annual Conference 2022 – Higher education knowledge in a plural world
- Graduate Outcomes in UK Transnational Higher Education: a Case Study of the United Arab Emirates
- CGHE Annual Conference 2021: Remaking higher education for a more equal world
Recent publications
- Brooks, R., & Rensimer, L. (2024). Higher education actors’ responses to the Ukraine-Russia conflict: an analysis of geopolitical spatial imaginaries. Journal of Education Policy, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2024.2334945
- Rensimer, L., & Brooks, R. (2024). “The European Universities Initiative: Further Stratification in the Pursuit of European Cooperation?” Compare. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057925.2024.2307551?src=exp-la
- Rensimer, L., & McCowan, T. (2024). “Rethinking International Flows of Aid to Higher Education”. International Higher Education. https://www.internationalhighereducation.net/api-v1/article/!/action/getPdfOfArticle/articleID/3808/productID/29/filename/article-id-3808.pdf
- Rensimer, L., & McCowan, T. (2023). “Reconceptualising International Flows of Aid to and through Higher Education” (Working Paper No. 97). Oxford: Centre for Global Higher Education. /publications/working-paper/reconceptualising-international-flows-of-aid-to-and-through-higher-education/
- Brooks, R., & Rensimer, L. (2023). “The European Universities Initiative and European Spatial Imaginaries”. Globalisation, Societies and Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2210515
- Rensimer, L., & Brooks, R. (2023). “The European Universities Initiative: Championing Excellence and Inclusion?” International Higher Education, 113, 32–33. https://doi.org/10.36197/IHE.2023.113.14
- Transnational Graduate Outcomes: A case study of the United Arab Emirates, Universities UK International (UUKi), October 2021
- Rensimer, L. (2021). “Negotiating educational choices in uncertain transnational space: South Asian diaspora in the United Arab Emirates“. British Journal of Educational Studies 69(5), 599–620.
