ONE-DAY SEMINAR

Date: Friday 28 June 2019
Time: 9.15am-3.15pm
Venue: Gardner Tower, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA), University of Sussex

This seminar is an opportunity to share findings from the research project Higher Education, Knowledge Exchange and Policy Learning in The Asian Century: A UK/Japanese Partnership with policymakers and relevant higher education professionals and stakeholders. The project investigated how internationalisation in Japan was experienced by migrant academics and doctoral researchers. 

PROGRAMME

Internationalising Higher Education in Japan: Photo Gallery

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OPEN RESEARCH SEMINAR

Date: Tuesday 4 June 2019
Time: 5-6.30pm
Venue: Room G36, Jubilee
Speakers: Carole Leathwood,  Professor Emerita, London Metropolitan University & Dr Barbara Read, Reader - Educational Leadership & Policy, School of Education, University of Glasgow

In this seminar, Carole and Barbara draw on a qualitative study with 20 UK-based academics on casualised contracts to consider the implications of the short-term nature of such employment arrangements for teaching and pedagogy. They come to this with a temporal perspective, in part in response to Felt’s (2016) call for a chronopolitical analysis of the changing temporalities of academia. ‘Short-termism’ can be seen as one aspect of the temporal reordering of higher education in the context of fast capitalism and the commodification of knowledge, evident not only in the increase in academics on casualised contracts but also in modularised, outcome-based learning and ‘bite-sized’ knowledge. They will discuss how short-term temporal logics marked by last-minute or ‘just-in-time’ modalities can be seen to impact negatively on teaching preparation and pedagogical relationships, raising questions about innovation and criticality, power and in/security, continuity and care.

Seminar Promo

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DOCTORAL SEMINAR

Date: Monday 13 May 2019
Time: 2-4pm
Venue: Room G35, Jubilee
Speaker: Rosa Marvell, CHEER Doctoral Researcher, Education PhD

Rosa’s research considers the trajectories of Master’s students who were part of the first generation in their family to attend university, drawing on biographical-narrative interviews with 41 students across four English universities. Her presentation will reflect on experiences of navigating analysis of narrative data and initial emerging findings, with a particular focus on combining use of thematic analysis via the ‘hermeneutic circle’ (Squire, 2008:44) and a narrative ‘small stories’ approach (Bamberg and Georgakopoulou, 2008).

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OPEN RESEARCH SEMINAR

Date: Monday 25 March 2019
Time: 5-6.30pm
Venue: Room 143, Jubilee
Speaker: Dr Ibrar Bhatt, Queen’s University, Belfast

In this seminar, Dr Bhatt will examine digital literacy and how it relates to the philosophical study of ignorance. Ignorance of how digital technologies work (eg. how users’ online activities can be used to the advantage of platform owners without the users’ knowledge, and how browsing can be confined) is still not well understood from the perspective of user practice. Building on work in Literacy Studies - which has often examined ‘knowledge production’ - he will argue that a social practice approach to digital literacy can also help examine how epistemologies of ignorance may be produced, reproduced and sustained. Using data from a study exploring the knowledge producing work of undergraduate students through interviews and recorded observations of assignment writing, Dr Bhatt will also argue that particular digital literacy practices pave the way for the construction of certain forms of ignorance, and that this kind of literacy inquiry is a vital step in better understanding the implications of online practices.

Seminar Promo

Just Google It: Photo Gallery

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OPEN RESEARCH SEMINAR

Date: Tuesday 5 March 2019
Time: 12-1.30pm
Venue: Room 106, Ashdown House
Speaker: Professor Robert W. Aspinall, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan

In the Japanese University system, the strong impression remains that Japanese employees are permanent and foreign employees are temporary. This was traditionally justified by the view that foreign academic staff have two functions: to be involved in specific research projects that are time limited; and to act as ‘native speakers’, ie. living, breathing embodiments of their own culture and language (something which, by definition, cannot be done by a Japanese national). However, many foreign nationals, especially those who specialise in Japanese Studies, the teaching of English as a foreign language, or related fields, have been able to build long-lasting careers there. This presentation will introduce some of the strategies adopted by those academics who have a long experience in Japan. It will also introduce some ethnographic studies of non-Japanese staff who work in the higher education system in Japan.

Seminar Promo

 

Apologies for the small technical glitch in which audio and camera visuals are lost for a couple of minutes from half an hour into this recording.

 

Being a Migrant Academic in Japan: Photo Gallery

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PANEL DISCUSSION FOR LGBT HISTORY MONTH

Date: Monday 18 February 2019
Time: 5.30-7.30pm
Venue: Room 143, Jubilee
Panel Speakers: Dominic Smithies, Student Minds / Sally Munt, Professor of Cultural/Gender Studies, Sussex Centre for Migration Research, Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies / Dr Paul Boyce, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and International Development 

In celebration of LGBT History Month, CHEER is hosting this special panel to discuss how heteronormativity operates in higher education institutions, what its effects are on students, faculty and staff and how we can challenge and disrupt it.

Disrupting Heteronormativity in Higher Education: Photo Gallery

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OPEN RESEARCH SEMINAR

Date: 28 November 2018
Time: 12-2pm
Venue: Room G23, Jubilee
Speakers: Dr Carolina Guzman Valenzuela - CIAE / Dr Juan Pablo Queupil - CIE / Dr Ana Luisa Muñoz-Garcia- CEPPE

Deconstructing international collaboration in academia: a geopolitical perspective (Carolina Guzman - CIAE)

In this presentation, the concept of academic international collaboration is problematized. The term ‘collaboration’ usually refers to collective actions through which a group of people, institutions or countries aim to reach a shared goal. However, international academic collaborative practices may be seen as problematic in a context where competition (for prestige or resources) prevails and where asymmetrical relationships are present, especially geopolitically. In this presentation, international collaboration between Latin American scholars and academics from universities in well-industrialized countries is scrutinized. By examining the publication patterns in journals in the Web of Science (WoS), SCOPUS and the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) datasets between 2000 and 2015, this presentation offers critical reflections about how to conceptualize and put into practice international academic collaborations. This presentation is based on my chapter ‘Values and the international collaborative research in higher education: negotiating epistemic power between the Global South and the Global North’. In ‘Values of, and in, the University in a Time of Uncertainty’, edited by P- Gibbs, J. Jameson and A. Elwick. Springer (2019).

Educational Collaboration of Chilean Scholars: A Social Network Analysis of the international dimension of co-authored articles (Juan Pablo Queupil - CIE)

With the significant development of communication technologies and globalization, collaborative communities can be easily developed. However, the utilization of such collaboration has not been deeply analyzed in the educational field, as well in developing countries in a comparative and international way. In this sense, Social Network Analysis (SNA) methods can provide insightful information towards the extension of collaboration networks in educational scholars’ settings. Chile presents an interesting and relevant case study for examining the potential of the SNA to understand collaborations and emerging roles at the scholar level. To study the patterns of successful co-authored articles I draw upon the Web of Science (WoS) dataset. Accordingly, some keywords are used in a purposeful manner. The span of time considered in this query is 2000-2014. Thus, a total of 635 scholars are publishing papers, and only 23 of them single-authored their articles. Furthermore, most collaboration is promoting international partnerships, taking into account that almost 70% of the clusters present at least one scholar located outside Chile. In this regard, Chile is collaborating more with the US, Spain and England, showing a strong South-North dialogue. However, Chilean scholars have a major role in the collaborative network, taking into account their SNA indicators.

A Persistent Gender Inequality of Public Research Funding for Doing Knowledge (Ana Luisa Muñoz-Garcia- CEPPE)

There is a general agreement that the academia should be a space of construction and dissemination of knowledge, and funding becomes key in that process. Researchers and academics struggle with funding, and women scholars face more challenges than their men colleagues in this task. Despite the fact that there is a broad analysis of issues on gender and knowledge in developed countries, there is scarce evidence from emerging economies. In the case of Chile, it has developed a strong agenda on advancing human capital which have increased the number of women in the universities. However, during decades it has maintained a low percentage of the GDP (0,36% ) for R+D and during the last years women have complaints publically about gender gap funding and issues related to sexual harassments within the universities. We took the main data base on research between 2005 and 2015, where 9956 projects were approved. Our results show a persistent gender inequality. Despite an increase of the number of women scholars, overall, in 2005, projects led by women represented the 22.2%, and in 2015 this percentage was pretty similar, 22.5%. Even worse, these percentages are lower in major STEM fields, such as Engineering (19%), Mathematics (18%), Astronomy (15%), and Physics (10%). On the educational field the overall proportion of funded projects was almost equal for men and women. However, since 2011 men scholars are by far more benefited, being the proportion in 2015 of 76% in favor of men. Furthermore, a content analysis of the projects shows that on the educational field there are not projects that addresses gender issues (0 out of 305 project), and from de 9556 funded projects in the analyzed period, just 26 states gender or women issues (0.2%), mostly coming from Medicine field. These results show that in spite of the efforts Conicyt has not addressed appropriately the support of women scholars in Chile. From a feminist perspective, this paper is an invitation to think research policies and the ways academics are creating knowledge within the universities.

Seminar Promo

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OPEN RESEARCH SEMINAR

Date: 12 November 2018 
Time: 5-6.30pm   
Venue: Room 203, Fulton Building
Speaker: Dr Linzi J Kemp, Associate Professor, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Studies on the progress of women from higher education, through organisations, and to leadership are, as yet, at a nascent stage globally. In particular, there is comparatively little scholarship and heightened media attention on women’s rights in the Middle East region. Contributing to an emergent body of academic knowledge, Dr Kemp presents her own and others’ findings from various studies - particularly in the Arab Gulf states.

The influences on women from socio-cultural and organisational factors were explored to enable sense-making in context. A story emerged of women’s (in)equality and gender uniformity bounded by beliefs and behaviours in society and the workplace. A virtual centre was constructed from this research to support academics and practitioners  (http://wil.insightsme.net), along with multi-media teaching and training resources and an ‘Expert Woman List’ to improve equality and gender diversity on conference platforms and in the media.

Seminar Promo

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CONFERENCE

Date: 15 October 2018  
Venue: Conference Hall, Jubilee Library, Jubilee Street, Brighton, BN1 1GE
Keynote Speakers: Dr Sarah O’Shea, Associate Professor in Adult, Vocational and Higher Education University of Wollongong / Dr Richard Waller, Associate Professor in Sociology of Education, University of the West of England

This conference - jointly organised by the Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER) and the Centre for Teaching and Learning Research (CTLR) at the University of Sussex - offered a critical interrogation of key moments of transition into through and beyond higher education. Key themes covered included identities, pedagogies and academic practices; UK and international policy imperatives; elite spaces and identities in transition and re-thinking the role of the ‘social’ in moments of transition. 

Promo

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OPEN RESEARCH SEMINAR

Date: 17 September 2018 
Time: 12-1.30pm   
Venue: Room 114, Fulton 
Speaker: Jillian Blackmore, Alfred Deakin Professor and Professor of Education, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia / CHEER Visiting Professor

Universities globally are being reconfigured by the pressures of massification, internationalisation, commercialisation, digitalisation and accountability. The organisational response in Australia, the UK, New Zealand, the USA and Europe has, to varying degrees, been that of increased managerialism with a focus on markets and research reputation in the context of reduced funding and increased global competition. The gift economy has been traditionally the basis of academic collegiality and the production of knowledge in the academy through gifting of expertise. But the nature and purpose of the University is changing - as is academic work.

In the context of increased precarity/casualisation of academic work as in a gig economy, market practices permeate everyday processes of the University with pseudo contractual relations between the University/academics/students with the outsourcing of labour. Academic sociality is shifting from one of gifting with the voluntary exchange of expertise to focus on contractualised economic activities of exchange aligning with university and national priorities. These changing material, social and cultural conditions of academic labour heighten tensions between academics and management.
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BIOG
Jill Blackmore AM, is Alfred Deakin Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University, Founding Director of the Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation, and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia. Her research interests include, from a feminist perspective, globalisation, education policy and governance; international and intercultural education; educational restructuring, leadership and organisational change; spatial redesign and innovative pedagogies; teachers’ and academics’ work - all with a focus on equity. Recent higher education research has focused on disengagement with and lack of diversity in leadership, international education and graduate employability. Her research has focused in particular on the re/constitution of the social relations of gender in the early 21st century.

Publications include J. Blackmore (2016) Critical Perspectives on Educational Leadership: Nancy Fraser. Routledge; Blackmore, J. Sanchez, M. and Sawers, N.(eds) (2017) Globalised Re/gendering of the Academy and Leadership,Routledge. Arber, R; Blackmore, J and Vongalis, -Macrow, A. (eds) (2014) Mobile teachers and curriculum in international schooling. Rotterdam: Sense.

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