Latest Blog Posts

Inga Ulnicane ‘… Europe is a unique aspiration. […] It is an aspiration of a world full of new technologies and age-old values’, Ursula von der Leyen, then incoming President of the European Commission, wrote in her political guidelines in 2019. Since then questions of new technologies and European values have been at the forefront […]

Kasja Weenink The study ‘We’re stubborn enough to create our own world’ (Weenink, Aarts, & Jacobs, 2021) addresses how directors of educational programs understand and enact higher education quality in interdependence with its environment. It reveals that the directors’ room to play out their quality views depends on their position within the academic hierarchy and […]

This article is based on research presented at the UACES Graduate Forum Research Conference 2021 (17-18 June, online)   Cybersecurity has become the backbone of a global digital society, a key element for a variety of issues ranging from national security, data protection, the trustworthiness of AI and 5G technologies, digital sovereignty, to, last but not least, […]

Nicolas Rüffin In a recent paper, Simon Marginson (2021) analyzes four competing narratives commonly used to explain the growth of global science. He concludes that each of the predominant narratives—growth of networks, international arms races, global markets, and centre-periphery models—falls short from fully explaining all facets of the phenomenon of global science. Consequently, Marginson calls […]

Pradeep Singh and Bowen Xu The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) had its second virtual General Conference held between 30th August – 3rd September 2021. This year ECPR has attracted over 2,400 scholars worldwide participating in 66 sections covering a wide range of topics and presentations. For the ECPR Standing Group on Knowledge Politics and […]

Alina Felder Convening virtually over the course of three days (30 June – 2 July 2021), twelve PhD students from six countries exchanged about current research and challenges to researching the area of higher education. The workshop on ‘European higher education in times of uncertainty’ comprised two keynote lectures by senior researchers – Jeroen Huisman […]

Inga Ulnicane Science has traditionally been one of the most international activities. Long before political and economic European integration started in the mid-20th century, researchers were collaborating and exchanging knowledge across national and organisational borders. During the past decades, international research collaboration has increased due to a number of processes internal and external to science […]

Priya Vijaykumar Poojary The current political shifts in the form of increasing populism, the resurgence of nationalism, structural racism, and the pandemic are altering global political environments. These shifts are occurring in tangent with the internationalization of higher education as we witness new regional higher educational models (both intra- and inter) and increasing cross-border academic […]

Alina Felder European higher education institutions are receiving substantial attention in various areas of EU policy making. They are expected to foster excellence in research, mobility in education and cohesion through cross-border exchange. Yet, the interrelationship of these different governance sites for a Europe of Knowledge (Gornitzka 2010) appears under investigated. While higher education policy […]

Justyna Bandola-Gill The quest for usable science is one of the defining challenges for contemporary universities. One of the key drivers of this change is the rise of the so-called impact agenda, in which research funding is directly linked to the socio-economic value of produced knowledge. This change in research funding – and the financial […]