Jul 2026· Journal of International Cooperation in Education· pp. 1-9· 0 citations· 43 references
Abstract
Internationalization is a central objective in higher education, yet its implementation often remains more symbolic than transformative. This paper reflects on two field-based experiences within an Italian university: a North–South academic partnership and the supervision of international doctoral students in a biomedical laboratory. It examines how cooperation and inclusion may unintentionally reproduce epistemic hierarchies, misalignments and uneven distributions of responsibility.
The study adopts a reflective narrative methodology grounded in the authors' direct involvement in two situated cases. The first explores a capacity-building partnership with a Global South institution; the second focuses on doctoral supervision in a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) context marked by linguistic, cultural and institutional distance. Both cases are interpreted through the lenses of epistemic asymmetry, intercultural negotiation and institutional readiness.
The cases reveal recurring tensions in cross-cultural academic relationships, including mismatched expectations, temporal dissonance and implicit norms. These frictions reflect deeper divergences in academic worldviews and institutional logics. In both contexts, continuity was sustained not through full alignment, but through compensatory adjustments and uneven redistributions of academic labor. Formal inclusion did not ensure meaningful engagement or epistemic reciprocity.
This paper offers a dual perspective from a single institutional setting, linking international cooperation and doctoral supervision within one analytical framework. It contributes to debates on internationalization by showing how asymmetry is not only experienced as friction but also actively managed in practice. The paper calls for a shift from compliance-driven models toward more dialogic, reflexive and context-sensitive approaches, particularly relevant in STEM environments where research, teaching, and supervision intersect.
International faculty (IF) are increasingly recruited to Chinese universities to support knowledge transfer and internationalisation, yet they frequently report experiencing persistent marginal positions. This study examines how IF in Chinese higher education navigate this marginal status. Drawing on thirty semi-structured interviews, we identify five reflexive tactics: playing by the rules, contextual collaboration, negotiating around the rules, tactical non-pursuit, and strategic self-detachment. These tactics are deployed across four domains of institutional integration: cultural norms, interpersonal relations, resources, and academic practice. By foregrounding reflexivity, the analysis reframes integration not as a binary outcome of assimilation or marginalisation, but as a non-linear decision-making process mediated by ethical judgement. The study reveals that integration encompasses not only intercultural competence and resource allocation, but also a strategic balancing of selective engagement and detachment, driven by distinct ethical foci. Findings underscore the value of more inclusive institutional cultures and greater tolerance for
outsider-within
positions.
Jie-lan Ding, Lili Yang, Jacob Mlynarski· Higher Education· 0 citations
In a world characterized by intensified globalization and the simultaneous reassertion of cultural and symbolic borders, intercultural dialogue has become a critical societal and educational challenge. This article examines the role of universities as cultural mediators through the lens of academic diplomacy, understood as a values-driven form of international engagement grounded in dialogue, reciprocity, and knowledge exchange. Drawing on contemporary theoretical frameworks and empirical insights from the International Association of Universities’ 6th Global Survey on the Internationalization of Higher Education, the paper explores how internationalization can foster intercultural understanding while acknowledging its uneven effects across regions. Using the Free International University of Moldova (ULIM) as an institutional case study, the article analyzes three complementary dimensions of academic diplomacy: intercultural virtual exchange, language-based cultural diplomacy, and cross-border academic cooperation within international consortia. These initiatives illustrate how universities create spaces for dialogue, promote intercultural competencies, and contribute to social cohesion in contexts shaped by migration, digital transformation, and geopolitical tension. The findings suggest that internationalization does not automatically generate intercultural understanding; rather, its societal value depends on intentional, inclusive, and values-based strategies. By acting as cultural mediators, universities play a pivotal role in fostering sustainable intercultural networks and supporting peaceful coexistence in a re-bordered global landscape.
Valentina Ciumacenco· ACROSS Journal of Interdisci...· 0 citations
It is argued that AI-related integrity disputes are better understood as conflicts between competing values than as individual moral failings, and implications for policy design, assessment reform, and faculty development are discussed.
M. Grobler· Proceedings of the Internati...· 0 citations
Academic research is often narrated retrospectively as a coherent and linear journey: a clearly defined question, a carefully chosen method and a set of outcomes that appear to follow logically from the initial design. Yet for many postgraduate researchers, the lived experience of research is far messier. It is shaped not only by intellectual curiosity, but also by funding priorities, institutional agendas, supervisory expectations and personal commitments that do not always align neatly with what is considered academically “safe” or strategically valuable. This article reflects on my own research lifecycle as a postgraduate researcher in Sociotechnical Futures and Digital Methods, focusing on the decision-making processes that underpin my research design and the persistent tension between academic and funding interests on the one hand and personal, political and ethical motivations on the other. Rather than presenting my research as a stable project with a fixed trajectory, I explore it as a negotiated and evolving process, marked by uncertainty, compromises and reorientation. By situating this reflection within broader discussions around creativity, impact and knowledge production, I argue that moments of tension and apparent failure are not peripheral to the research lifecycle, but central to how postgraduate researchers learn to navigate academia and to imagine what their work is ultimately for. Postgraduate research projects, which are often exploratory and developmental in nature, may generate impact not only through definitive findings, but through the process of learning to ask better questions and engaging in informal, yet meaningful, scholarly discussions.
This paper aims to examine how bi- and multilingual academics reconstruct professional identities during international mobility and how they exercise agency in relation to language hierarchies, institutional expectations, and belonging across higher education systems.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 mobile bi- and multilingual scholars working across six higher education settings (Israel, Italy, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States). Interviews were carried out in participants' preferred languages and analyzed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis, with iterative coding, theme development, and ongoing reflexive memoing across the author team.
Five themes captured recurrent tensions: embodied linguistic marginalization (notably accent and “non-native” positioning), institutional contradictions between international rhetoric and local norms, strategic multilingual practices to manage legitimacy and workload, identity transformation through negotiated “in-betweenness”, and the conditional value of mobility as capital depending on context and recognition.
The sample is small and purposive, and findings are not intended to be statistically generalizable. The dataset is interview-based and captures narrated experience rather than observed institutional practice; additional triangulation through policy documents, workplace interactional data, or longitudinal follow-up would strengthen causal claims about change over time. Even so, the cross-setting design highlights patterned mechanisms through which recognition, gatekeeping, and symbolic valuation shape mobile scholars' trajectories, suggesting that future work should compare discipline-specific and contract-type differences and track identity outcomes across career stages.
Institutions recruiting international staff should align internationalization rhetoric with operational supports: transparent language expectations, workload recognition for multilingual labor (translation, mediation, “extra” student support), and fair evaluation practices that do not treat accent or local-language deficits as proxy competence measures. Supervisors and HR units can reduce gatekeeping by standardizing onboarding, providing funded language training, and clarifying when local-language proficiency is required. Departments can also formalize multilingual communication norms to prevent ad hoc, unequal reliance on mobile staff as linguistic brokers.
When mobility is framed as merit but linguistic difference is penalized, higher education reproduces inequity while benefiting from migrants' labor. Recognizing multilingual scholars' contributions supports more inclusive academic communities and mitigates “conditional belonging” that can erode well-being and retention. More coherent language and evaluation policies can reduce discrimination tied to accent and national origin, broaden participation in research and teaching, and improve the quality of student support in linguistically diverse settings.
The study integrates Third Space, transnational identity capital, and poststructural language–power perspectives to conceptualize academic mobility as contingent identity work rather than linear “progress.” Empirically, it offers a comparative, multilingual account across multiple systems, foregrounding how institutions simultaneously depend on mobile scholars and constrain their linguistic and professional legitimacy.
Yelena Zakharova, Anna Becker· International Journal of Com...· 0 citations
This paper aims to understand how academics experience the metrification of Third Mission activities and how these evaluative processes reshape the conditions for labour, work and action within the contemporary university.
The study adopts an autoethnographic reflection and semi-structured interviews with academics, university leaders, Third Mission delegates and early-career researchers operating within the Italian higher education system.
The findings reveal that Third Mission evaluation generates growing procedural burdens, uncertainty regarding evaluative criteria, inequities in recognition and workload allocation and a widening gap between institutional narratives of societal value and academics’ everyday practices. Metric-driven evaluation reorients engagement activities toward procedural compliance, privileging what is reportable over what is relational, ethical and transformative. These findings suggest the need for evaluation systems that recognise the qualitative, relational and ethical dimensions of societal engagement and that preserve academic agency, plurality and responsibility.
The paper contributes to interdisciplinary accounting research by extending debates on metrification and accountability to universities’ societal engagement. By mobilising Hannah Arendt's distinction between labour, work and action, it conceptualises the Third Mission evaluation as a process that risks transforming academics into labourers of metric compliance, eroding spaces for thinking, meaning and genuine public action. The study offers a novel theoretical lens for understanding how performance regimes reshape academic subjectivities and public value.
Rosanna Spanò, Francesca Manes Rossi, Ileana Steccolini et al.· Accounting, Auditing & A...· 0 citations
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