Conference Agenda

Russia’s war in Ukraine has drawn Western European attention to the interrelationship between Eastern, Central, and Western Europe and raised questions about realignments within Europe that might see a shift of geopolitical concerns more towards Central and Eastern European (CEE) states. Even before the war Emil Brix and Erhard Busek proposed that the future of Europe lies in the dynamics of policy and practice in Central Europe. This argument can be extended to include Eastern Europe. The war and various debates around it ask us all to consider the question of Europe not from its traditional centres in Western and Northwest Europe, but from Central and Eastern Europe and reflect on the questions and central concerns this presents.

The challenge posed by the symposium is, what might European higher education policy options look like when conceptualised through the historical experiences of CEE. This reverses the usual flow of policy trajectories and forces us to consider that the future of European higher education might be organised around different policy logics or scholarly concerns.

Research performativity (rankings, citation indexes, etc.) have been critiqued for producing distorting effects in academic practice and knowledge including the underrepresentation of the arts, humanities and some areas of the social sciences, and the relative invisibility of non-English language publications, in rankings and publication metrics , the encouragement of instrumental behaviours whereby scoring high against research performance indicators becomes an objective in its own right, influencing choice of research topic, what to write, and where to publish , and the impact on modes of knowledge, theories, and intellectual traditions in the non-core regions of Europe . These contribute to asymmetries in terms of academic collaboration, recognition, circulation of ideas as well as the economic and linguistic hindrances for non-core researchers and their institutions to gain greater visibility and acknowledgement internationally.

Normative higher education policy and policy scholarship frames the development of CEE in terms of policy emanating from the centres of global higher education and CEE aligning with these. In this framing CEE higher education is seen as modernising through an alignment with the centres of global higher education. This suggests an asymmetrical relationship between the two regions. For instance, scholars from CEE have argued that when viewed from Central and Eastern Europe the process of system harmonization driven by the Bologna process looks different. In CEE states Bologna was more than a process of system standardisation, being part of a broader economic and political transformation in the region, interacting with new ideas of national identity and the creation/recreation of nation-states, and highlighted the economic and infrastructural disparity between CEE and Western Europe. Therefore, looking at the project of system harmonization as it is experienced from Europe’s eastern boundaries provides a different way of understanding what harmonization might mean.

The symposium therefore discusses,

• The way CEE became a particular kind of object of inquiry for higher education policy research, flattening the differences between the systems of higher education in the varied political contexts of Central and Eastern Europe (Monika Orechova)
• How ‘European’ internationalisation of research confronts the particular conditions of higher education institutions in CEE states and how they vary due to different foci, policy approaches and historical legacies (Liudvika Leisyte), and
• What a different kind of higher education policy research approach can offer that responds positively to listening to CEE experiences (Simon Warren).

A cursory glance over education scholarship over the past 30 years, reveals a peculiar distinction. Out of all the articles available in the ERIC (Education Resource Information Center) database, published between 1990 and 2020, 562 articles bear some variation of the moniker ‘Central and Eastern Europe’ in the title. Curiously, ‘Western Europe’ appears in 71 articles, most of them (37) dating back to the period from 1990 to 2000. This means that the former is used almost 8 times as often as the latter. Such exceptional grouping together of a significant part of continental Europe is rarely questioned, though it merits a deeper discussion (Nygård & Strang, 2017). While on the surface it may seem a geographical distinction, the precise countries and their groups which are referred to as such in publications differ greatly. Moreover, nearly none of such grouping is observed for other parts of Europe. Whenever the title of an article refers to ‘Europe’, it is reasonable to expect that the research presented comes from the western part of the continent, however, if it comes from the central or eastern part (geographically speaking), ‘Europe’ usually needs a qualifier. There are several practical reasons for this practice, for example, in light of international publishing requirements, it is now often used by scholars based in the region as it helps to expand readership and improve one’s chances of publication, especially when research in smaller countries of the region is concerned. Yet, we believe that it tends to epistemically lump together vastly different countries with different social contexts, histories and approaches to education (Dakowska, 2017). Moreover, it also poses Central and Eastern Europe as an ‘other’ inside of Europe wherein (Western) Europe is considered the norm and (Central and Eastern) Europe remains relevant to the extent it strives to reach that norm as it was expected to do during the transition period (Cerych, 1995). This paper endeavours to interrogate the early conception of the notion of Central and Eastern Europe by analysing the international scholarship in higher education research from 1990 to 2000. We aim to elucidate the emergence of Central and Eastern Europe as a research unit and critically interrogate its discursive construction as the ‘other’ in opposition with the dominant concept of ‘Europe’.

Cerych, L. (1995). Educational reforms in Central and Eastern Europe. European Journal of Education, 30(4), 423–435. Dakowska, D. (2017). Competitive universities? The impact of international and European trends on academic institutions in the ‘New Europe.’ European Educational Research Journal, 16(5), 588–604. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904116688024 Nygård, S., & Strang, J. (2017). Conceptual universalization and the role of the peripheries. Contributions to the History of Concepts, 12(1), 55–75. https://doi.org/10.3167/choc.2017.120105

Internationalisation is perceived as crucial by policy makers and university managers, especially in small higher education systems, as it helps gain legitimacy and encourages policy learning as well as capacity building for these systems and their higher education institutions. At the same time, studies have shown that implementation of internationalisation is not a straightforward process in different systems due to different academic disciplinary cultures and traditions, closure of academic communities and their resistance to internationalisation when it is perceived as a threat (Leišytė, Želvys, 2022; Leišytė, Želvys, Zenkienė, 2009). This contribution focuses on the academics’ views on their institutional focus on research excellence and internationalisation and to what extent they are involved in international research activities in three small higher education systems – Lithuania, Croatia and Slovenia (Flander et al. 2022). Based on the international APIKS survey data (2022), we draw on the surveyed academics at research universities in the three Central and Central Europe systems. The findings show that even though internationalisation of research and research excellence rhetoric is high on the policy agenda across the studied higher education systems, the implications for institutions and individual academics vary due to different foci, policy approaches and historical legacies. We especially discuss differences and similarities among academic views by gender, academic rank and discipline.

Leišytė, L. & Želvys, R. (2021). International perspectives on transforming management of higher education [Sonderheft]. Acta Paedagogica Vilnensia, 46. https://www.journals.vu.lt/acta-paedagogica-vilnensia/article/view/24847/24058 Leišytė, L., Želvys, R. & Zenkienė, L. (2015). Re-contextualization of the Bologna process in Lithuania. European Journal of Higher Education, 5(1), Special Issue: Europeanization, Internationalization and Higher Education Reforms in Central and Eastern Europe, 49–67. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2014.951669 Flander, A., Kočar, S., Ćulum Ilić, B., Leišytė, L., Pekşen, S. & Rončević, N. (2022). Impact of internationalisation strategies on academics' international research activities: Case study of the three HE peripheries: Slovenia, Croatia and Lithuania. In M. Klemenčič (Ed.), From actors to reforms in European higher education: A Festschrift for Pavel Zgaga (S. 313–336). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09400-2_22

The contribution argues that policy oriented higher education studies (HES) would benefit from a transnational historical approach that decentres or parochializes the idea of Europe. HES largely reflects the global structure of knowledge production in that it is dominated by the research concerns and analytical interests of Western European and North American academia. CEE scholars often feel required to publish in internationally prestigious journals, and therefore publish in English, to frame analysis in line with dominant Euro/American theories and find that local or regional concerns are constructed as parochial and marginal. HES can often work with form of Eurocentrism that construes Western Europe as the pinnacle of modernisation in contrast to the backward and tradition-constrained East. Policy scholarship can therefore suggest that CEE higher education needs to ‘modernise’ by aligning with models that reflect the global centres of knowledge production. The modern scientific system does not simply emanate from the centres of global knowledge production in the UK, Western Europe, or America and diffuse voluntaristically to the rest of the world simply because of its inherent superiority, but is linked to historically constituted structures of power, empire, and epistemological dominance that produce spatial distributions of knowledge production and consumption globally and within Europe. The paper explores a number of strategies for reconfiguring HES that can alter the epistemic relationship between Western Europe and CEE. Transnational theme: Use transnational themes from global higher education discourses such as student mobility, internationalization, university rankings; Situate these in transnational themes drawn from transnational historical or social scientific scholarship such as processes of nation or empire building. Transnational space: Situate the research in regional constellations; Geopolitical spaces such as empires or the Cold War. Parochializing Europe: Foregrounding issues of power, empire/colonialism, and geopolitics; Defining transnational spaces, units of analysis, or periodization to enable new perspectives on phenomenon. Periodization: Defining the temporal span to explore the generation of policy ideas, strategies, and rationales as well as rejected alternatives; Working with multiple or layered temporalities and examine how they converge at certain historical moments to create the conditions for specific policy options. Unit of analysis and methodological nationalism: Recognize that spatial/political categories (nation/state) are categories of practice that sustain particular power relations The presentation will illustrate this framework with examples drawn from peripheralized zones of Europe, specifically system harmonisation related to Eastern Europe and student mobility in Southern Europe.

Brubaker, R. (2013). Categories of analysis and categories of practice: a note on the study of Muslims in European countries of immigration. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(1), 1–8. Hansen, P. (2002). European Integration, European Identity and the Colonial Connection. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(4), 483–498. Kozma, T., Rébay, M., Óhidy, A., & Szolár, É. (2014). The Bologna Process in Central and Eastern Europe. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. Patel, K. K. (2013). Provincialising European union: Co-operation and Integration in Europe in a Historical Perspective. Contemporary European History, 22(4), 649–673. Warren, S. (2022) A Transnational Historical Approach to Researching Global Higher Education Policy. In M.Tight and J.Huisman (Eds.) Theory and Method in Higher Education Research, Volume 8, 41–60, Bingley, England: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Wimmer, A., & Glick Schiller, N. (2002). Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), 301–334. Zarycki, T. (2014) Ideologies of Eastness in Central and Eastern Europe. Vol. 96. London: Routledge.