Conference Agenda

This paper reports on one component of a broader qualitative project on internationalisation in European higher education, focusing on how it is enacted through cooperation infrastructures and mobility-oriented programmes (Altbach & de Wit, 2018; de Wit, 2020). Rather than treating mobility as a neutral instrument of policy, we approach it as a lived and narrated practice through which academics interpret, justify, and sometimes defend internationalisation in everyday institutional life (Ackers, 2005; Kim, 2009). Methodologically, we use narrative analysis to examine how participants sequence events, assign responsibility, and evaluate what happens to them, paying attention to meaning-making and positioning in their accounts (Squire, Andrews & Tamboukou, 2014).

Internationalisation in European higher education can be understood as a heterogeneous assemblage of strategies and practices, strongly shaped by EU policy architectures that promote mobility, cooperation, and skills (Scott, 2015; Morley et al., 2018; Dillabough, 2021). These architectures circulate an imaginary of the flexible, adaptable academic subject and project benefits at institutional and system levels, while the literature also documents persistent ethical and organisational tensions in how internationalisation is pursued and governed (Robson & Wihlborg, 2016). Such tensions become sharper in politically contested environments where transnational cooperation and ‘global’ universities can be publicly framed as culturally suspect or socially divisive (Altbach & de Wit, 2018; van der Wende, 2020; Zembylas, 2025).

We treat Romania as a revealing site for examining this dynamic: internationalisation is institutionally promoted, yet public discourse can periodically problematise mobility and external ties, producing heightened sensitivity around critique and justification (Wodak & Fairclough, 2010, Dobbins, 2017; Kiss & Székely, 2021; Weimer & Barlete, 2020). In this context, participants’ narratives show how mobility becomes morally charged, something to be explained, legitimised, or carefully managed, while also revealing the largely unrecognised work required to keep internationalisation “going” in practice. We conceptualise this work as invisible academic work: translation, mediation, informal mentoring, and affective and relational labour that sustains cooperation but is rarely institutionally legible (Haton, 2017; Gordon, Willink & Hunter, 2024). Research questions

How do internationally mobile academics narrate and make sense of internationalisation in politically contested environments?

How do their stories represent moments of tension, ambivalence, and moral pressure around mobility (e.g., justification, suspicion, legitimacy)?

What forms of invisible academic work emerge in these narratives as ways of coping, mediating, and keeping internationalisation workable, and how are these forms of work valued, normalised, or obscured?

This paper investigates the structural barriers that international staff face in contributing to curriculum development within Finnish higher educational institutions, with a particular focus on Tampere University (TAU), where the authors’ pedagogical development and teaching practices are situated. Despite TAU’s strategic commitments to internationalization, the study demonstrates how institutional practices and power dynamics systematically hinder inclusive curriculum processes.

The research addresses the question:

How do international staff experience and navigate barriers to academic agency in curriculum development, and what structural changes are necessary to enable fair participation?

The objective is to critically examine how hidden curricula, language politics, and hierarchical governance converge to constrain the agency of international academics in curriculum planning and reform. Drawing on the authors' lived experience as international staff across different career stages over the last decade, spanning European and Asian university contexts, as well as a collaborative pedagogical course project, this paper integrates thematic reflections with theoretical insights to propose actionable institutional reforms.

The conceptual framework integrates four core elements:

• academic agency (Annala et al., 2023; Annala & Mäkinen, 2017), exploring how structures and roles enable or supress participation in curriculum reform;
• hidden curriculum (Lee, et al., 2023; Koutsouris, et al., 2021), capturing the unspoken norms and informal practices that shape inclusion and exclusion;
• the internationalization paradox (Tight, 2022; Khan, 2022), signifying the contradiction between the global recruitment of academic staff and their limited integration into decision-making processes; and
• social justice theory (Quinlan, 2014; Wrigley, 2018), offering a way to reflect on fairness in how decisions are made and how resources are shared in curriculum work. Wrigley (2017) highlights that for knowledge to truly support social justice, it must question inequality, draw on the everyday knowledge of marginalized groups, and challenge the dominant ideas that often shape academic disciplines.

This paper echos to the growing tension between institutional commitments to internationalization and the everyday realities of academic exclusion (Stein, 2017; Curaj, et al., 2020). As English-medium instruction (EMI) expands, particularly across the Nordic region, where countries like Finland are at the forefront of implementing EMI in higher education (Airey et al., 2017), universities are increasingly confronted with the contradictions embedded in their internal governance (Lehtimaja, et al., 2021). While internationalization strategies highlight inclusivity and global competence (Tampere University, 2023), institutional practices remain anchored in local linguistics and cultural norms that systematically exclude non-Finnish staff (Jousilahti, et al., 2022). This contradiction is intensified by the most recent Finnish government’s budget proposal (Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, 2026), which advances self-financing models for international programmes and further deepens inequality by replying on tuition-based access for non-EU/EEA students. These developments not only challenge the credibility of internationalization discourse but also expose the structural conditions that marginalize those expected to implement its ideals.

In addition, one particular condition worhty to mention is the persistent of informal "hyvä veli" networks (Yle, 2016), a historical term referring to elite and circles that hold behind-the-scenes influence over opportunities and decision-making sectors, including business, politics, and education. These unspoken yet powerful norms continue to shape exclusionary practices affecting international staff. As Finnish academic leadership increasingly shifts toward managerial models under ongoing university reforms, it becomes more urgent to examine how such deeply rooted practices endure within restructured governance systems (Kohtamäki, 2019).

By uncovering the disconnectedness between policy and practice, this study calls for a more critical examination of how inclusion is materially justified in curriculum processes. It contributes to curriculum research by demonstrating how access, participation, and recognition in higher educational structures are shaped by rooted norms of language, culture, and power.

COST Actions are policy-driven, interdisciplinary research networks aimed at fostering scientific excellence, inclusiveness, and pan-European cooperation across all fields of science. They are designed to facilitate access to international research networks, particularly for scholars affiliated with less research-intensive countries designated as Inclusiveness Target Countries (ITCs) (COST Association, 2026). Despite these formal inclusiveness policies, official statistics published by the COST Association indicate that leadership positions within COST Actions remain unevenly distributed, mirroring enduring asymmetries across the European research space (Alom Bartrolí, 2023; Choquez-Millan et al., 2024).

Drawing on Bourdieu’s Theory of Social Practices, this study approaches COST as a field (i.e., a structured social space governed by specific rules, hierarchies, and struggles over valued forms of capital). Within this field, leadership positions may neither be obtained nor exercised and experienced equally by leaders from different countries, as particular dispositions, resources, and forms of recognition may privilege some researchers over others. In other words, leadership opportunities and experiences within COST networks are closely tied to access to different forms of capital, such as symbolic capital (e.g., academic reputation and visibility), social capital (e.g., embeddedness in influential transnational networks), cultural capital (e.g., linguistic competence and familiarity with dominant norms), and institutional capital (e.g., affiliation with prestigious universities or research systems) (Bourdieu, 2011), as these forms of capital are unequally distributed across national contexts. Therefore, COST Actions may exhibit leadership dynamics that reproduce stratification within European science by reinforcing the advantages of actors already in strong positions, despite the COST Association’s inclusivity policies.

While prior research has documented disparities in leadership representation, there remains a limited understanding of how such inequalities are experienced by those who occupy leadership roles (Koch et al., 2024), particularly leaders affiliated with higher education institutions in less research-intensive countries. This study addresses this gap by examining the experiences of Turkish-affiliated scholars who have held leadership positions (e.g., Action Chairs, Action Vice-Chairs, Management Committee members) within COST Actions. By foregrounding Turkish COST Action leaders’ narratives, this study examines how inequalities in leadership are experienced, normalized, negotiated, or contested within international research networks.