Opportunities and Challenges of Internationalisation: a Critical Geographical Perspective on the Nature and Outcomes of Academic Events

Academic events have been characterised as important meeting spaces for the communication of new knowledge and for networking practices within and across different epistemic communities. This lecture examines the wider question how the global geographies of international academic events have not only reflected but also impacted on changing international knowledge networks in different world regions and been inextricably linked to global geopolitics. By comparing the politics and geographies of academic travels to scientific jubilees in the early twentieth century with the changing global geographies of international attendance at the International Geographical Congresses in Paris 1984, Sydney 1988, Cologne 2012 and Beijing 2016, I critically interrogate the development of different academic internationalisms in their wider economic, sociocultural and geopolitical contexts and discuss a variety of opportunities and challenges resulting from these insights for the internationalisation of science and scholarship.

Bio
Heike Jöns is Professor of Geography at Loughborough University. She was awarded her Ph.D. in Geography at the University of Heidelberg (2002) and has subsequently worked at the universities of Heidelberg, Nottingham and Loughborough. Heike has published widely on the development, geographies, and politics of academic mobilities and knowledge production, transatlantic knowledge networks, and internationalisation and globalisation processes in the university. Heike’s books include the research monograph Grenzüberschreitende Mobilität und Kooperation in den Wissenschaften (2003) and the edited volumes Geographies of Science (2010) and Mobilities of Knowledge (2017).