Themes of the Workshop/PhD Course:

The workshop/course will reflect on changes since 2000, when the Lisbon Strategy set out an image of a Europe of Science in a global knowledge economy. It will consider how Europe currently positions itself in a world characterised by competing global strategies, and will explore the ways that the USA, China and India are using higher education to try and bring about their visions of the world. We will map changing flows of international students and consider the role of rankings in shaping a global market model and alternative ways of conceptualising internationalism. Academics and PhD students from anywhere in the world who are working on relevant topics are welcome. There will be keynotes and workshop sessions drawing together knowledge on these topics from the partners and participants in the project.

The workshop/PhD course is part of a project, ‘European Universities – Critical Futures’ where an ever-expanding network of senior and early stage/PhD researchers form an inter-generational learning community that works to generate a new agenda for research on universities in Europe and re-set the conditions of dialogue between researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders. There will be sessions devoted to discussing each student’s research project, and full participation in the course earns 3 ECTS.

The project:

The workshop/PhD course is part of a project, led by the Centre for Higher Education, Aarhus University (CHEF) and involving a network of 18 centres of research on higher education across Europe, which PhD students from anywhere are welcome to join.

The project's aims are to generate a new agenda for research on universities in Europe; to create an inter-generational learning community in which PhDs and early stage researchers are integrated into all the project's agenda-setting activities; and generate a dialogue between researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders about university futures. In the workshop/PhD course, keynotes and workshop sessions will draw together existing knowledge and discuss each student’s research project.

Importantly, the aim is also to generate new collaborative networks between early stage and senior researchers to develop new avenues for research on topics they define concerning the roles that universities can play in the critical issues facing Europe’s future. These working groups will be invited to bring their results together in the project's final conference at DPU (the Danish School of Education) in summer 2021.

Read more about the project here.