The first virtual convening of the Critical Internationalization Studies Network occurred in September 2018. You can view a recording here.
The next virtual meeting will take place on January 25, 2019 at 12PM eastern US-Canada time/9AM pacific/5PM UK time. It will feature guest speakers Riyad Shahjahan, Annabelle Estera, and Vivek Vellanki, who will present their paper “Global University Rankings (GURs) Visual Media, Cartography and Geopolitics of Knowledge.” The abstract of their paper follows: “Amid debates about the role and impact of global university rankings (GURs), very few have closely examined how GURs media outlets construct meanings of higher education (HE) in their visual representations. We critically examine publicly available visual media containing regional imagery in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and US News and World Report websites. Drawing on Walter Mignolo’s (2011) notion of geopolitics of knowledge, Hall’s heuristics of representation (Hall 1997b, 1997c), and pan-semiotic categories (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; van Leeuwen, 1996), we argue that THE and USN GUR media offers a visual cartography of global HE reflecting the geopolitics of knowledge in global HE. As such, GURs imagery privilege and ‘humanize’ epistemic privileged core centers of HE regions and HE institutions (HEI). Based on our analysis of the visual imagery and applying the above frameworks, we identified three major themes around geopolitics of knowledge: 1) Tourist gaze, 2) Campus architectural gaze, and 3) (De)humanizing students. We suggest that GURs rankings media are not simply constructing and informing us about the quality and excellence of HE, but simultaneously teaching us how to view university campuses and regions of the world, that often reproduce historical geopolitics of knowledge. We end with methodological implications of visual cultural studies in comparative education.”
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