Waking the giant: the role of academics in the next wave of internationalisation

Attendees at the EAIE Conference in Prague last week were interested to learn more about the role(s) of academic staff in the internationalisation of higher education, with around 60 conference delegates attending Friday's session.

Interestingly, a show of hands at the start of the presentation indicated that only four attendees were in academic positions. However, this no doubt reflects the professional focus of the EAIE Conference itself and the predominance of professional staff in the overall registrations.

Questions from the floor focused on a range of key questions, including:

• How to build a "sustainable" approach to academic champions, i.e. in building teams of interested academics rather than relying on individual enthusiasts
• How to incorporate appropriate rewards and recognition into institutional frameworks for internationalisation
• How to recognise the "wrong" incentives for academic staff, for example in their engagement with TNE.

Chaired by Dr Robert Coelen (Stenden University, Netherlands), the three speakers were:

• Douglas Proctor (University of Melbourne, Australia)
• Vinitha Gengatharan (University of Toronto, Canada)
• Kees Kouwenaar (VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands).

A collated copy of the three presentations is available here.


Many thanks also to Vicky Lewis in the UK for including reference to this session in her write-up of the EAIE Conference entitled  "Internationalisation and the motivation to engage".