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The internationalisation of the academy varies according to individual, institutional and structural characteristics. Among factors influencing it, discipline plays a major role. Relying on data collected by two international comparative studies -the Changing Academic Profession Study and the Academic Profession in Europe Study -this article focuses on two aspects of the internationalisation of the academy -namely, international research collaboration and international mobility -asking whether these two aspects are associated with academic disciplines and how. Results from multivariate data analysescomparing Europe and the Rest of the World or other meaningful macro-regions -show that in some areas, such as international research collaboration and educational circulation, the international behaviours of academics belonging to different disciplines diverge, while in some others, such as research productivity related to international research collaboration and short-term professional circulation, they converge.

The article aims at investigating Italian academics’ Public Engagement highlighting its two dimensions, namely “Local Community Engagement” (LCE) and “General Political Engagement” (GPE). It is based on the results of a national survey on academics’ third mission activities carried out in the year 2015/2016 collecting information from a representative sample of 5,123 respondents working at 62 universities, with a response rate of 34.2%. In addition to detecting distinct dimensions of academics’ Public Engagement, data analysis shows that Italian academics are much more involved in LCE activities than in GPE ones. Although both LCE and GPE are influenced by many common factors, such as academic rank, discipline and being involved in other third mission activities, they also display peculiar traits: LCE activities are more likely to involve academic women while GPE are more likely to be carried out by older academics; LCE activities appear to be context-dependent while GPE activities are not. Hence, the article offers a contribution to a better understanding of the different goals of Public Engagement activities and of their spatial dimension.

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