With the usual apologies for cross-posting …
CALL FOR PAPERS 2015 AAG Conference, Chicago, April 21-25
Organisers: John Harrison, Darren P Smith and Chloe Kinton (Loughborough University)
Connecting up the multiple geographies of higher education
International, national, regional and local geographies of higher education are being incessantly transformed across the globe. In recent years, a marked critical scholarship has developed to theorise and conceptualise the emerging spaces and (un)even geographies of higher education. This includes geographical accounts examining the causes and consequences of: increased transnational student and academic mobility; the global competition to attract and retain top academic, managerial and administrative staff, as well as relatively high fee paying international students; the impact of world university rankings; the formation of new regional, national and international research consortia; the establishment of branch campuses and education hubs, and; changing patterns of student populations within university towns and cities through processes of studentification/destudentification. The result is that we are confronted with multiple geographies of higher education, operating at different spatial scales and according to different spatial logics. This raises important questions about how these multiple geographies of higher education interact in complementary, competing, overlapping or contradictory ways.
The main aim of this session is to develop a more spatially holistic perspective on the geographies of higher education. We particularly encourage the offer of papers that seek to connect transformations to systems of higher education to the more mundane everyday geographies of higher education, as well as those which can identify theoretical frameworks that help illuminate our understandings of how systems of higher education are being variously transformed, reconfigured, and reproduced.
Potential topics/themes of interest might also include, but are not limited to:
• Theoretical interventions and/or empirical studies which seek to advance new ways of conceptualising the multiple geographies of higher education;
• Papers which seek to connect the changing geographies of higher education to broader processes of political, economic and societal change;
• Studies which seek to understand the geographical basis for new spatial patterns of higher education, such as expressions of migration, mobilities consumption, and regulation;
• Accounts which examine the motives, aspirations, or mechanisms through which higher education is being spatially reconfigured;
• Research which positions current patterns of higher education praxis within a historical context;
• Perspectives on how the multiple geographies of higher education interact in complementary, competing, overlapping or contradictory ways;
• Implications for research, training and teaching from the spatial reconfiguration of higher education;
If you are interested in presenting a paper please send your 250 word abstract to John Harrison ([log in to unmask]), Darren P Smith ([log in to unmask]) and Chloe Kinton ([log in to unmask]) by 20 October. You will be notified of acceptance before 24 October, at which point you will be need to have registered at www.aag.org to receive your AAG PIN.
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