Thematic Areas

As an international network, we are committed to producing a substantive report in this area in 2015 (to be published as a special issue of an academic journal to be confirmed) consisting of two parts: general mapping of discourses in the thematic areas of the network (i.e. thematic general areas); discussions of significant ethical questions.

Thematic areas

1. ethics, internationalization and neoliberalism (marketisation of HE, global policy and managerialism of HE)
2. ethics and international/’global’ partnerships (N-S partnerships, leadership/s, voluntourism, global citizenship, humanitarianism, power and complicities etc.)
3. ethics and global (internationalized) faculty and student populations (transnationalisms, mobility, alterity/difference, dominance, pluralism, etc.)
4. ethics and the internationalization of the curriculum (dilemmas of representation, quality, accessibility, cognitive justice, pedagogies of implication, etc.)
5. ethics and the internationalization of academic knowledge production (dilemmas of inequalities, representation, quality standards, accessibility, cognitive justice, linguistic imperialism, research ethics, etc.)
6. ethics, internationalization and indigenous knowledges and communities (questions of internalised dominance, difficult knowledges and partnerships, epistemological translations, conflictual hybridity, contestatory dialogue etc.)
7. ethics, internationalization and locally disadvantaged and/or marginalised communities (questions of internalized oppression, access, support, discrimination/stigma, academic rigour, etc.)
8. ethics, internationalization and technology (open learning, web 2.0, wikinomics, mediatization, platforms)
9. ethics and internationalization beyond neoliberalism (the world university, pluriversity, etc.)
10. ethics, the public and the private in HE (public engagement, public scholarship, public goods)

Possible topics to be addressed

• power and complicities
• resistance, contestation and dialogue
• the idea of 'internationalization' (reifying or challenging modern ideals?)
• education as an export, incoming international students (brain gain/drain), overseas expansion
• studying and volunteering abroad schemes
• the global learner and global skills
• philanthropy and humanitarianism
• global citizenship
• 'helping' Africa
• gender disparities
• teaching for global cognitive and affective justice
• difficult knowledge on an international /global scale
• the 'learning' imperative
• inter- and trans-disciplinarity
• academic mobility
• academic partnerships
• the 'Third World' as a data set and testing ground
• ontological/epistemological pluralism
• equality of opportunity vs equality of outcomes (widening participation and access – rigour vs access)
• the myth of individual and autonomous knowledge production
• perspectives from centres, peripheries and semi-peripheries
• reversing knowledge flows – South-North and South-South capacity building
• indigenization of the curriculum/disciplines
• ecological and environmental ethics
• mobilization of knowledge and critique