Our Publications
Our publications examine higher education through case studies, theoretical analyses, and field research. Topics include the erosion of university autonomy, the effects of global political trends, and the role of academia in addressing crises and societal change.
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ECPR Conference Papers by U&C Team Members
Universities & Crisis (U&C) team members were among the 2,000 participants at this year’s General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). Held at Charles University in Prague, the event brought together academics from across Europe and beyond for more than 500 panels on political science, international relations and sociology research. In…
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Colonial Childhoods and Young MK Freedom Fighters in an Apartheid Past by Jo-Anne Dillabough
In this chapter, I explore the role of coloniality in the making of youth activist lives in the context of apartheid in South Africa. The primary questions posed are as follows: how does one learn urban youth activism driven by eugenics logics while simultaneously navigating the epistemic margins of knowledge-making, particularly when such marginal experiences…
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Moral Authority and the Academy under Attack: The Case of #Boğaziçidireniyor at Boğaziçi University by Elizabeth Buckner
This article focuses on the question of how universities respond to authoritarian attacks on their autonomy through a close reading of faculty protests over rector appointments at Boğaziçi University (BU) in Turkey. I draw on digital and social media accounts of the protests and expert opinion interviews with displaced Turkish academics to refine the arguments…
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Dominant or Dominating? Imaginaries of higher education in Turkey and Northern Syria by Jee Rubin and Lakshmi Bose
This paper examines the ways in which administrators, academics and students living under conditions of authoritarianism come to imagine the university’s political possibilities and horizons. To this aim, we first consider how alternative imaginaries are constructed and contained at Boğaziçi University, where the parameters of political possibility are pre-figured both by the current ruling regime…
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UK higher education, neoliberal meritocracy, and the culture of the new capitalism by Michele Martini and Susan L. Robertson
Drawing on empirical data this paper explores how a new articulation of meritocracy has emerged over time in UK Higher Education. To this end, we analyze the five major HE reports produced in the UK between 1997–2010. The proposed analytical design combines semantic mapping, natural language processing (NLP), and critical discourse analysis to identify the…
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Globalisation, Culture and Higher Education by Susan L Robertson, Mariano Rosenzvaig & Elizabeth Maber
What does it mean to take ‘the cultural turn’ seriously, and in our case, to engage it in research on globalisation and higher education? In this book chapter, we argue that this involves adding a cultural lens to engage with, rather than depart from, an analysis of the global political economy of higher education. This…
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Crises and the Production of Multiple Privatisations in UK Higher Education by Susan L. Robertson & Michele Martini
This paper examines the production of multiple trajectories of privatisations in UK higher education over the past two decades. Using corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis as methodologies, we show how six key higher education reports since 1997 discursively set into motion those structural selectivities (Jessop, 2005) which are strategically selective of different modalities of privatisation and their social relations (Martini & Robertson, 2021).
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Introduction to special issue on education and populisms by Matias Nestore & Susan Robertson
In this Special Issue, we seek to develop a more nuanced understandings of current political and cultural shifts by taking a different approach to the study of populism, i.e., analysing it as having a more fully ideological relationship with the economic model and social ontology of globalised neoliberalism (Steger 2019).
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Education cleavages, or market society and the rise of authoritarian populism? by Susan L. Robertson & Matias Nestore
This paper explores how, in what ways, and with what outcomes, deep structural transformations have reconstituted higher education in England, and are deeply implicated in the rise of authoritarian populism. We focus particularly on the ways in which our understandings and lived experiences of class, social mobility, meritocracy, social inequality, and social justice have been transformed.
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Higher education, violent modernities and the ‘global present’: the paradox of politics and new populist imaginaries in HE by Jo-Anne Dillabough
Higher Education (HE) constitutes a space that calls urgently for new understandings in the contemporary political moment. One way of establishing such an understanding is to consider more fully the work of political theorists in relation to questions of power in the modern nation-state, particularly as these impinge upon the key problem of the rise of populism in the twenty-first century. This paper argues that a productive conceptual approach is to be found in the recurring idea of political paradox in the political philosophy literature, an idea which is utilized to explore the role of conflicted national politics, moralising state practices, and scientific rationalities in reconfiguring the governing rationales of HE.
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Cultural trauma and the politics of access to higher education in Syria by Zeina Al Azmeh et al.
This paper examines the relationship between the politics of Higher Education access pertaining to longstanding practices of patrimonial authoritarian politics and the narration of collective trauma. Building on an empirical study of Syrian HE during war, we suggest that a narrative disjuncture within HEIs has a damaging impact not only upon the educational process, HE reconstruction and reform, but also upon the possibility of social reconciliation.
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Conflict, insecurity and the political economies of higher education: The case of Syria post-2011 by Jo-Anne Dillabough et al.
This paper stems from a 12-month collaborative enquiry between a group of Syrian academics in exile in Turkey and academics from the University of Cambridge into the state of Syrian Higher Education after the onset of the conflict in 2011. The purpose of this paper is to draw on 19 open-ended interviews with exiled Syrian academics; two focus groups; mapping and timeline exercises; and 117 interviews collected remotely by collaborating Syrian academics with former colleagues and students who were still living inside Syria at the time of data collection.
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Diversity without Race by Elizabeth Buckner et al.
This article examines how a sample of 62 higher education institutions in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom discuss international students in their official institutionalization strategies, focusing on how ideas of race and diversity are addressed. We find that institutional strategies connect international students to an abstract notion of diversity, using visual images to portray campus environments as inclusive of racial, ethnic and religious diversity.
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Provincializing the OECD-PISA global competences project by Susan L. Robertson
In 2018 the OECD added a set of global competence measures to its PISA programme, and reported on the outcomes in November 2020. In this paper I explore the provenance of the idea of global competence underpinning the OECD-PISA Global Competence framework and measure. The official account by the OECD references the OECD PISA Governing Board, Expert Panels, National Teams and Consortia engaged in the creation and delivery of this assessment tool. However, in this paper I problematise this narrative and sketch out an alternate genealogy that seems to operate in the shadowlands of the official account.
Our Publications
Our publications examine higher education through case studies, theoretical analyses, and field research. Topics include the erosion of university autonomy, the effects of global political trends, and the role of academia in addressing crises and societal change.
-
ECPR Conference Papers by U&C Team Members
Universities & Crisis (U&C) team members were among the 2,000 participants at this year’s General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). Held at Charles University in Prague, the event brought together academics from across Europe and beyond for more than 500 panels on political science, international relations and sociology research. In…
-
Colonial Childhoods and Young MK Freedom Fighters in an Apartheid Past by Jo-Anne Dillabough
In this chapter, I explore the role of coloniality in the making of youth activist lives in the context of apartheid in South Africa. The primary questions posed are as follows: how does one learn urban youth activism driven by eugenics logics while simultaneously navigating the epistemic margins of knowledge-making, particularly when such marginal experiences…
-
Moral Authority and the Academy under Attack: The Case of #Boğaziçidireniyor at Boğaziçi University by Elizabeth Buckner
This article focuses on the question of how universities respond to authoritarian attacks on their autonomy through a close reading of faculty protests over rector appointments at Boğaziçi University (BU) in Turkey. I draw on digital and social media accounts of the protests and expert opinion interviews with displaced Turkish academics to refine the arguments…
-
Dominant or Dominating? Imaginaries of higher education in Turkey and Northern Syria by Jee Rubin and Lakshmi Bose
This paper examines the ways in which administrators, academics and students living under conditions of authoritarianism come to imagine the university’s political possibilities and horizons. To this aim, we first consider how alternative imaginaries are constructed and contained at Boğaziçi University, where the parameters of political possibility are pre-figured both by the current ruling regime…
-
UK higher education, neoliberal meritocracy, and the culture of the new capitalism by Michele Martini and Susan L. Robertson
Drawing on empirical data this paper explores how a new articulation of meritocracy has emerged over time in UK Higher Education. To this end, we analyze the five major HE reports produced in the UK between 1997–2010. The proposed analytical design combines semantic mapping, natural language processing (NLP), and critical discourse analysis to identify the…
-
Globalisation, Culture and Higher Education by Susan L Robertson, Mariano Rosenzvaig & Elizabeth Maber
What does it mean to take ‘the cultural turn’ seriously, and in our case, to engage it in research on globalisation and higher education? In this book chapter, we argue that this involves adding a cultural lens to engage with, rather than depart from, an analysis of the global political economy of higher education. This…
-
Crises and the Production of Multiple Privatisations in UK Higher Education by Susan L. Robertson & Michele Martini
This paper examines the production of multiple trajectories of privatisations in UK higher education over the past two decades. Using corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis as methodologies, we show how six key higher education reports since 1997 discursively set into motion those structural selectivities (Jessop, 2005) which are strategically selective of different modalities of privatisation and their social relations (Martini & Robertson, 2021).
-
Introduction to special issue on education and populisms by Matias Nestore & Susan Robertson
In this Special Issue, we seek to develop a more nuanced understandings of current political and cultural shifts by taking a different approach to the study of populism, i.e., analysing it as having a more fully ideological relationship with the economic model and social ontology of globalised neoliberalism (Steger 2019).
-
Education cleavages, or market society and the rise of authoritarian populism? by Susan L. Robertson & Matias Nestore
This paper explores how, in what ways, and with what outcomes, deep structural transformations have reconstituted higher education in England, and are deeply implicated in the rise of authoritarian populism. We focus particularly on the ways in which our understandings and lived experiences of class, social mobility, meritocracy, social inequality, and social justice have been transformed.
-
Higher education, violent modernities and the ‘global present’: the paradox of politics and new populist imaginaries in HE by Jo-Anne Dillabough
Higher Education (HE) constitutes a space that calls urgently for new understandings in the contemporary political moment. One way of establishing such an understanding is to consider more fully the work of political theorists in relation to questions of power in the modern nation-state, particularly as these impinge upon the key problem of the rise of populism in the twenty-first century. This paper argues that a productive conceptual approach is to be found in the recurring idea of political paradox in the political philosophy literature, an idea which is utilized to explore the role of conflicted national politics, moralising state practices, and scientific rationalities in reconfiguring the governing rationales of HE.
-
Cultural trauma and the politics of access to higher education in Syria by Zeina Al Azmeh et al.
This paper examines the relationship between the politics of Higher Education access pertaining to longstanding practices of patrimonial authoritarian politics and the narration of collective trauma. Building on an empirical study of Syrian HE during war, we suggest that a narrative disjuncture within HEIs has a damaging impact not only upon the educational process, HE reconstruction and reform, but also upon the possibility of social reconciliation.
-
Conflict, insecurity and the political economies of higher education: The case of Syria post-2011 by Jo-Anne Dillabough et al.
This paper stems from a 12-month collaborative enquiry between a group of Syrian academics in exile in Turkey and academics from the University of Cambridge into the state of Syrian Higher Education after the onset of the conflict in 2011. The purpose of this paper is to draw on 19 open-ended interviews with exiled Syrian academics; two focus groups; mapping and timeline exercises; and 117 interviews collected remotely by collaborating Syrian academics with former colleagues and students who were still living inside Syria at the time of data collection.
-
Diversity without Race by Elizabeth Buckner et al.
This article examines how a sample of 62 higher education institutions in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom discuss international students in their official institutionalization strategies, focusing on how ideas of race and diversity are addressed. We find that institutional strategies connect international students to an abstract notion of diversity, using visual images to portray campus environments as inclusive of racial, ethnic and religious diversity.
-
Provincializing the OECD-PISA global competences project by Susan L. Robertson
In 2018 the OECD added a set of global competence measures to its PISA programme, and reported on the outcomes in November 2020. In this paper I explore the provenance of the idea of global competence underpinning the OECD-PISA Global Competence framework and measure. The official account by the OECD references the OECD PISA Governing Board, Expert Panels, National Teams and Consortia engaged in the creation and delivery of this assessment tool. However, in this paper I problematise this narrative and sketch out an alternate genealogy that seems to operate in the shadowlands of the official account.