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.
Tristan’s books include Higher Education for and beyond the Sustainable Development Goals (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Education as a Human Right (Bloomsbury, 2013) and Rethinking Citizenship Education (Continuum, 2009). From 2015-2021 he was editor of Compare – a Journal of International and Comparative Education. He is currently leading the multi-country GCRF project Climate-U (Transforming Universities for a Changing Climate).
CGHE publications
CGHE research projects
Upcoming Events
Past Events
- 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
- CGHE Annual Conference 2021: Remaking higher education for a more equal world
- CGHE 2020 Annual Conference webinar panel: Higher education and sustainability
- Pedagogies for critical thinking: innovation and outcomes in African higher education
- What is the value of international HE research?
- Higher education and the UN’s sustainable development goals: the case of the intercultural universities in Mexico
- Employability in higher education: tensions, risks and alternatives
Select publications
- 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
- Universities facing Climate Change and Sustainability
Körber-Stiftung, 2021 - Transnational Graduate Outcomes: A case study of the United Arab Emirates, Universities UK International (UUKi), October 2021
- Higher Education for and beyond the Sustainable Development Goals
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019
