AMIN in association with the CES Education Research Seminar Programme welcomed Dr Terri Kim (UEL CASS School of Education and Communities)

In this seminar, Terri offered a brief overview of the state of the field of academic mobilities research and policy before illustrating my current work on the relationship between transnational academic mobility and the varieties of academic capitalism. Academic mobility crossing borders has existed since ancient times, but the international regulation of cross-border academic mobility and knowledge as ‘capital’ is a more modern phenomenon developed since the age of mercantilism (in the 17th through 19th centuries) in the rise of nation-states. In the age of academic capitalism, universities are conscripted as part of knowledge economy and the importation of scientists and scholars are considered more strategically necessary for scientific knowledge transfer and innovation in international competition. However, it is not straightforward how they make their way within global academic hierarchies. Terri's current research attempts to illuminate unequal power relations which are at work in the process of forming and shaping academic ‘capital’ among globally mobile academics. The analysis of this paper will focus on the transnational cultural dimensions of academic mobility and knowledge creation and their mutual entanglement in the conventional boundaries and hierarchies.

Biography

Terri Kim is Reader in Comparative Higher Education at UEL, where she leads the Higher Education Research Group (HERG), and a Principal Fellow of Higher Education Academy (PFHEA). She gained her PhD from the Institute of Education, University of London in December 1998, and worked as a research consultant for OECD in Paris in 1999; a Visiting Research Scholar in International Relations at LSE in London in 2000-01; a Brain Korea 21 Contract Professor at Seoul National University in Korea in 2001-02; and full-time Lecturer at Brunel University in 2002-2013. She has been a member of the Comparative Education Society in Europe Executive Committee (2012-16). She is the Book Review Editor of Comparative Education. She is an Associate Editor of The Sage Encyclopaedia of Higher Education (forthcoming 2018). She has published one book and over 40 articles internationally. As a specialist in comparative higher education, her research interests cover international relations and governance of university, knowledge and the academic profession, transnational academic mobility/migration