
Vera Spangler
About
My research project
Knowledge legitimacy and the role of international student mobility in the re/production of global hierarchiesHigher education internationalisation has been deemed instrumental to exchanging and producing knowledge and to educate globally engaged students for an ever more interconnected and complex world. Often, internationalisation and, notably, mobility, are described as beneficial, inherently good and a neutral process. Yet for some years now critical perspectives on the development and current orientation of internationalisation have emerged, expressing concern about the risk of reproduction of already uneven global hierarchies through mainstream internationalisation activities, particularly in institutions of the Global North and Western/ized higher education institutions.
My project is concerned with knowledge legitimacy and the role internationalisation of higher education through student mobility plays in the re/production of global hierarchies and the promotion of certain kinds of knowledges. Inspired by critical internationalisation studies, this project seeks a deeper engagement with relational, ethical and political issues of internationalisation and mobility to understand but also put forth new approaches to forms of knowledge production, classroom practices, and pedagogies. By taking on a critical orientation, I wish to promote social and cognitive justice and challenge taken-for granted norms and epistemologies.
The project is anchored in ethnographic fieldwork and uses different qualitative methods. I will collect data from England, Germany and Denmark.
Supervisors
Higher education internationalisation has been deemed instrumental to exchanging and producing knowledge and to educate globally engaged students for an ever more interconnected and complex world. Often, internationalisation and, notably, mobility, are described as beneficial, inherently good and a neutral process. Yet for some years now critical perspectives on the development and current orientation of internationalisation have emerged, expressing concern about the risk of reproduction of already uneven global hierarchies through mainstream internationalisation activities, particularly in institutions of the Global North and Western/ized higher education institutions.
My project is concerned with knowledge legitimacy and the role internationalisation of higher education through student mobility plays in the re/production of global hierarchies and the promotion of certain kinds of knowledges. Inspired by critical internationalisation studies, this project seeks a deeper engagement with relational, ethical and political issues of internationalisation and mobility to understand but also put forth new approaches to forms of knowledge production, classroom practices, and pedagogies. By taking on a critical orientation, I wish to promote social and cognitive justice and challenge taken-for granted norms and epistemologies.
The project is anchored in ethnographic fieldwork and uses different qualitative methods. I will collect data from England, Germany and Denmark.