CGHE 2025 Conference: Global Rupture? Geopolitics, policy repair and the reimagining of higher education
- Lee Rensimer, IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society
- Tristan McCowan, IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society
- Alis Oancea, University of Oxford
- Xin Xu, University of Oxford
- Hannah Moscovitz, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University
- Vincent Carpentier, IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society
- Mario Azevedo, State University of Maringá
- Claire Callender, IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society and Birkbeck
- Thandi Lewin, University of Johannesburg
- Chris Millward, University of Birmingham
- James Robson, University of Oxford
- Maia Chankseliani, University of Oxford
- Olga Mun, St Edmund Hall
- David Mills, University of Oxford
- Ka Ho Mok, Hang Seng University (Hong Kong)
- Simon Marginson, University of Oxford
- Antonin Charret, University of Oxford
- Rachel Brooks, University of Surrey
- Ariane de Gayardon, University of Twente
- Dr Ying Yang , Education University of Hong Kong
- Sazana Jayadeva, University of Surrey, United Kingdom
- Cora Lingling Xu, Durham University, United Kingdom
- Catherine Gomes, RMIT University, Australia
- Sylvie Lomer, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
- Dr Jing Yu, University of Wisconsin Madison, United States
- Diotima Chattoraj, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- Miguel Lim, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
- Wanwei Nie, University College London
- Ariane de Gayardon, University of Twente
- Uma Pradhan, Institute of Education, University College London
- Johanna Waters, University College London
In the 1990s globalisation provided the rationale and opportunity for the rapid expansion of higher education. Across the world universities began to position themselves as part of a global landscape. International research collaborations, student mobility, and higher education participation rates all reached new heights. Next came world university rankings, reinforcing and reifying this global imaginary. Amidst what has been called academic ‘star wars’, states competed to attract the best researchers and boost their universities up the global league tables. Meanwhile, academic staff experienced a new culture of productivism, with narrow conceptions of research ‘excellence’, and an emphasis on ‘outputs’ over teaching and service.
Today new geopolitical rivalries, destructive regional conflicts and elite competition are rupturing the global higher education community. The research inequalities created by bibliometric coloniality and Eurocentric knowledge systems continue to widen. In many places, the future of higher education funding, student finance, academic mobility, research assessment and publishing, academic freedom, and the tertiary sector more broadly, are contested and uncertain. At the same time, nation-states increasingly rely on higher and tertiary education to support individual flourishing and skill development, place-based regional economies and national innovation systems: can higher education meet these conflicting societal expectations?
The challenge for researchers and higher education policymakers is to engage in epistemic and infrastructural repair. Around the world, student activists have insisted that it is the responsibility of universities to actively respond to political violence, social injustice and the climate crisis. Universities provide a moral compass, as well as a catalyst for social change.
At this tenth CGHE conference, to be held as a fully hybrid event over two days at Oxford’s Department of Education, more than seventy speakers on sixteen parallel panels and one plenary roundtable will be addressing these and other current topics. All welcome to join us in Oxford or on Teams. A small conference registration fee will cover catering costs. The conference reception is kindly sponsored by CGHE’s partner university, the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong.
Below is the timetable for the two-day conference.
Day 1
10am – 11am
Opening plenary
11am – 11.30am
Tea/coffee break
11.30am – 1pm
Panel 1
1pm – 2pm
Buffet lunch
2pm – 3.30pm
Panel 2
3.30pm – 4pm
Tea/coffee break
4.30pm – 6pm
Plenary policy roundtable at Kellogg Hub (kindly sponsored by Hang Seng University)
6pm – 7.30pm
Drinks reception
Full programme for day 1.
Day 2
9am – 10.30am
Panel 3
10.30am – 11am
Tea/coffee break
11am – 12.30pm
Panel 4
12.30pm – 1.30pm
Buffet lunch
Afternoon tours of Oxford organised by student volunteers.
Full programme for day 2.
Booking
Registration and payment
All f2f participants – from students to convenors – are asked to register here: spaces are strictly limited and registration is on a first-come, first-served basis. The registration fees are very modest.
All online participants and presenters are asked to register here. Again registration fees are minimal. Teams links for all panels will be sent to online registrations before the conference.
Event Notes
Travel, access and accommodation
The Education Department is located in North Oxford, about 20 minutes walk from the train station, London bus stops, and the town centre. There is travel and access information here.
Hotels close to the Department include the Cotswold Lodge and the Linton Lodge. As it is the vacation, you may also like to stay in a college room: check University rooms.
There is a café that serves drinks and snacks. A light sandwich lunch will be provided both days. There are many restaurants in Oxford, including some close to the Department on North Parade.
The panels will be held in the Department, and the policy roundtable in the Kellogg College hub, which is about 5 minutes walk away. The conference reception will be hosted at the hub after the roundtable on the 3rd April, generously supported by Hang Seng University in Hong Kong.
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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.
Hannah Moscovitz is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University. Hannah’s research is focused on the territorial politics of higher education, touching on themes related to regionalism, minority nationalism and federalism and their intersection with higher education policy and governance.
Olga is a co-convenor of the Philosophy of Education Reading Group at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Olga’s main research interest is in the topics of epistemic injustice across all levels of education and across national borders with a focus on higher education and the process of knowledge production in academic institutes and universities. Her core interest lies between the areas of social epistemology, research on research (RoR) and comparative and international education (CIE). She has been a recipient of multiple research awards in the United States and the United Kingdom and is an elected co-convenor of the Comparative and International Education Special Interest Group at the British Educational Research Association (BERA).
Ariane de Gayardon is Assistant Professor at the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the financing of higher education internationally and its interaction with equity, including topics such as free higher education and student debt.
Ying is a postdoctoral fellow at the Education University of Hong Kong, an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Manchester, and a WG2 Co-stakeholder Advisor of COST Action ENIS Network. Her research interests include education agents, access to international higher education, international student recruitment and application, and longitudinal qualitative research methods.
Sazana Jayadeva is a Surrey Future Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey. Sazana is an Associate Editor of the journal Sociology and co-convenes the International Research and Researchers’ Network of the Society for Research into Higher Education in the UK.
Dr Cora Lingling Xu (PhD, Cambridge, FHEA) is Associate Professor at Durham University, UK. She is an executive editor of British Journal of Sociology of Education and an editorial board member of multiple international journals, such as Cambridge Journal of Education and Critical Studies in Education.
Catherine Gomes is a Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University in Melbourne. She is known for her work in the three interrelated areas of communication, culture and identity, international student wellbeing, and transient migrants. Her latest book International Student Visibility: Living and Participating in Community is open access.
Sylvie Lomer is Senior Lecturer in Policy and Practice at the University of Manchester. She graduated 2016 with Education Doctorate from the University of Sheffield. She’s been a teacher of international students for 8 years. She’s also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Recent book: Research with International Students.
Jing Yu, PhD, is an assistant professor of international higher education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis and a faculty affiliate in Asian American studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include international student mobility, intersections of race, class, and nationality, and international dimensions of equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging.
Dr Diotima Chattoraj is a Research Fellow at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information in Nanyang Technological University. Additionally, she is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the department of Social and Health Sciences in James Cook University, Singapore. A qualitative researcher, she focuses on Asian migration, international relations, consumer psychology and advertising effects. She has authored more than 25 journal articles, 6 books, 10 book chapters in leading journals. Additionally, she is the Deputy Editor of South Asia Research (Sage) and serves as a peer reviewer for a number of refereed journals.
Dr Miguel Antonio Lim is senior lecturer and REF lead at the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester. He is lead researcher for the intra-ASEAN scholarship programme of the ASEAN secretariat.
Wanwei Nie is a doctoral candidate at University College London (UCL). Her research interests include international and comparative education, student experiences, and historical research. Currently, her work focuses on the dynamics of transnational higher education (TNHE), specifically exploring its impact on local educational settings and the interactions between local institutions and globally recognized universities. She is particularly interested in how TNHE influences international education from a historical perspective, examining its role in the broader processes of globalization and internationalization in higher education and what role do students play in these exchanges.
Ariane de Gayardon is Assistant Professor at the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the University of Twente in the Netherlands
Uma Pradhan is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Education, University College London, UK. Her research explores the intersection of language, education, and aspirations in South Asia. She has co-edited Anthropological Perspectives on Education in Nepal: Educational Transformations and Avenues of Learning (Oxford University Press) and authored Simultaneous Identities: Language, Education, and the Nepali Nation (Cambridge University Press). She also serves as a co-editor of the journal Compare.
Johanna Waters is Professor of Human Geography at University College London and co-Director of the Migration Research Unit. She is visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, University of Oxford and an elected Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. Johanna works on issues related to migration, mobilities and education, with a particular focus on why children and young people seek educational opportunities abroad, and with what consequences (especially for the household). Her latest book (with Rachel Brooks) is entitled Student Mobilities and Migration and will be published by Palgrave in 2021.
