Hannah Moscovitz and Emma Sabzalieva  How are shifting geopolitics affecting higher education institutions and systems? What are the power dynamics at play when geopolitics comes into conflict with higher education policy and practice? What is different about today’s higher education and global geopolitical trends from their interactions in the past? These questions are at the … The New Geopolitics of Higher Education 

Justinas Lingevicius The emerging AI policy of the European Union (EU), new financial instruments and institutional entities dedicated to boosting emerging technologies including AI, suggest that the EU approaches technological developments strategically and aims to play a role in their international development and regulation. However, the EU position on military AI – the wide-ranging issue … What does military Artificial Intelligence tell us about the European Union’s actorness?

By Anna-Lena Rüland The world has seen a fair share of democratic backsliding in recent years, for example in countries like Turkey, the Philippines and Russia. Science diplomacy is often seen as a means to continue some sort of engagement with such regimes. Although it sounds great in theory, we do not yet know how … Learning from Rivals: The Role of Science Diplomacy

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 … Artificial Intelligence and Europe: New tech & old vibes

By 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 … How programme directors frame higher education quality in interdependence

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 … B-STA-R: A new dataset to study science diplomacy and global science

By 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 … About time to research higher education! – A workshop-based reflection on European higher education research(ers) in times of uncertainty