Are you a Central Asia based academic or practitioner with direct experience of the Bologna Process/European Higher Education Area? If so, we want to hear from you!

I am co-Chair of a proposal for a roundtable at the European Consortium of Political Researchers (ECPR) General Conference, which will be held in August 2018 in Hamburg, Germany.

The roundtable is called:

Global Bolognaization:
Central Asian Encounters with the European Higher Education Area

The call for papers is below and attached: CfP Global Bolognaization – ECPR 2018_forcirculation. Please share widely with your networks.

Paper proposals are due by January 10, 2018.

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ECPR 2018 General Conference, Hamburg, Germany, August 22-25, 2018

Call for proposals

Within the ECPR Section Politics of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, we invite proposals for a roundtable on:

Global Bolognaization:
Central Asian Encounters with the European Higher Education Area

Abstract

The Bologna Process has now spread far beyond the borders of the European Union, a process we call Global Bolognaization. This makes it critical to understand how European higher education ideas and reforms are being transferred to other settings and what impact this is having in these expanded spaces.

This roundtable focuses on the ways in which the Bologna Process is impacting the region of Central Asia and its constituent countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. All five states have been engaging with the Bologna Process for some time: Kazakhstan has been a full member of the the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) since 2010; European-inspired reforms in the other Central Asian states are either ongoing or currently in the process of being implemented. Yet Central Asia is currently on the periphery of the EHEA, not just geographically but in terms of academic/practitioner research.

As such, the purpose of this roundtable is to bring the Central Asian experience of Global Bolognaization to the fore. As far as possible, presentations at this roundtable will be by academics and practitioners with first-hand experience of the EHEA as it is being encountered in Central Asia. We welcome research based case studies of how the Bologna Process has impacted individual or groups of higher education institutions, faculty members, students, and the public; comparative studies between and beyond institutions and/or Central Asian states; and reflective studies on the prospects of the Bologna Process in Central Asia.

Proposal requirements

All proposals for this roundtable must have an analytical component, even if they are empirical studies. Where appropriate, participants should draw on a theoretical or conceptual framework that is a suitable match for the Special Interest Group’s theme of the Politics of Higher Education, Research and Innovation.

Roundtable details

We will select up to five papers for inclusion in this roundtable.

At the conference, each presenter will give a brief presentation (5-7 minutes) and must submit a short paper before the conference (2,000-3,000 words, in English). After the presentations, there will be a moderated discussion between the presenters and the audience lasting around one hour.

The roundtable will be conducted in English.

How to apply

Email a Word document to the two roundtable Chairs – emma.sabzalieva@mail.utoronto.ca and akatayeva@mail.ru – by midnight Astana time on Wednesday January 10, 2018 with the following information:

Title of your paper:

Abstract (300-500 words):

Keywords (3-8) indicating the subject, theme and scope of the paper:

Presenter’s name:

Presenter’s email address:

Presenter’s institution:

If you have a co-author(s), please also include their name(s), email address(es) and institution(s).

Late or incomplete applications will not be accepted. 

Roundtable Chairs

Emma Sabzalieva, PhD Candidate, University of Toronto, Canada; emma.sabzalieva@mail.utoronto.ca; http://emmasabzalieva.com.

Dr Aliya Akatayeva, Head, Social Studies Department, Satbayev Research University, Kazakhstan; akatayeva@mail.ru.

Section abstract for the Special Interest Group Politics of Higher Education, Research and Innovation

Knowledge policies are at the forefront of contemporary global politics and are seen as the foundation on which societies coalesce and economies thrive. This Section builds on the previous six Sections on the Europe of Knowledge and invites contributions to consider the various dimensions of knowledge policy development.

Specifically, we are interested in theoretical, empirical, and comparative contributions that investigate the role of politics and policy in the global, multi-level, multi-issue, and multi-actor governance of knowledge. By role, we refer to effects that ideas, actors (both individual and organisational), policy instruments/mixes, and institutions have had on the governance of knowledge, and vice-versa. We focus on roles to enable a multidisciplinary discussion on whether these factors share defining characteristics across different knowledge policy domains (i.e. research, higher education, and innovation), and between distinct governance levels and geographical regions.

This Section continues to welcome scholars, globally, from all theoretical and methodological approaches to critically discuss the reconfiguration of knowledge systems around the world.