Refugees and higher education: Trans-national perspectives on access, equity, and internationalization – Book Symposium
- Hans de Wit, Boston College
- Andrew Harvey, La Trobe University
- Wondwosen Tamrat, St. Mary’s University, Ethiopia
- Lisa Unangst, Centre for Higher Education Governance Ghent (CHEGG)
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This webinar draws from the recent publication Refugees and higher education: Trans-national perspectives on access, equity, and internationalization to consider the policies, practices, and experiences associated with the higher education of displaced students. The focus is not only on refugee education as an issue of access and equity, but also on this phenomenon as seen through the lens of internationalization. What competencies are called for among university faculty and staff welcoming refugee-background students to their institutional contexts? How might “distance learning” be considered anew?
These challenges and opportunities for institutional growth will be closely considered by this group of authors focused on Australia, Ethiopia, Germany, Venezuela, and the United States. They address sub-topics ranging from the intersection of national equity policy and the education of displaced students to the role of private providers. These perspectives will provide key insights for faculty and staff at higher education institutions that currently enroll asylees or refugees, as well as those that may do so in the future.
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Hans de Wit is Director of the Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) at Boston College. He previously served as Director of the Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation (CHEI) at the Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy, and Professor of Internationalization of Higher Education at the Amsterdam, University of Applied Sciences. He was Vice-President for International Affairs of the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1996-2003. He is a Senior Fellow of the International Association of Universities (IAU), and chair of the board of directors of World Education Services in New York/Toronto. He is founding member and past president of the European Association for International Education (EAIE), founding editor of the Journal of Studies in International Education, consulting editor of Policy Reviews in Higher Education, associate editor of International higher Education, and co-editor of the Brill-Sense book series ‘Global Perspectives in Higher Education’.
Associate Professor Andrew Harvey is Executive Director of Student Equity and Director of the Centre for Higher Education Equity and Diversity Research at La Trobe University. Andrew has published widely in areas of higher education policy, including issues of access, retention, regionality, comparative international admissions frameworks, employability, campus climate, diversity, and the experiences of foster care and new migrant students. In 2017 he led a national report on Raising university participation of new migrants in regional communities funded by the Department of Education and Training. In 2020 he led a national report on Improving employment and education outcomes for Somali Australians funded by the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services and the Banyule City Council. Andrew is lead editor of Student Equity in Australian Higher Education: Twenty-five years of A Fair Chance for All (Springer, 2016).
Wondwosen Tamrat is an Associate Professor and President of St. Mary’s University in Ethiopia. He is an affiliate scholar of the Program for Research on Private Higher Education (PROPHE) headquartered at SUNY Albany. He coordinates the Sub-Cluster for Private Higher Education in Africa under the African Union’s Higher Education Cluster of the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA) 2016-25. He currently serves as a board member of the Ethiopian Higher Education Relevance and Quality Assurance Agency (HERQA). Tamrat has taught at public and private universities in Ethiopia for more than two decades and has published more than 40 articles and chapters in international peer reviewed journals including Studies in Higher Education, the Journal of Studies in International Education, Quality in Higher Education and with global publishers such as Routledge, Bloomsbury and Brill-Sense. He has authored two books (2008, 2012) and co-edited The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Internationalization of Higher Education in the Global South (2021).
Lisa Unangst is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Higher Education Governance Ghent (CHEGG). Lisa’s research interests include higher education access and experience among displaced learners, as well as comparative and cross-national constructions of “diversity” in higher education. She is an associate editor of Higher Education Research and Development and editorial board member of the Journal of International Students and Higher Education Governance and Policy. Lisa has published in Comparative Education Review, the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, and Higher Education Policy, among other outlets. Her dissertation, which examined how university equal opportunity plans construct “diversity” and facilitate the support of migrant and refugee students in the German case, was supported by the Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund. She is lead editor of the recent Brill-Sense publication Refugees and higher education: Trans-national perspectives on access, equity, and internationalization.
