Negotiating the academic periphery: Critical reflections on early career mobility

Conceptualizing international education

“…Although there is a vibrant literature on academic mobility (Chen and Koyama, 2013;Dervin, 2011;Fahey and Kenway, 2010;Leung, 2013), research on student mobility has only engaged to a limited extent with this literature (see, for example, Hammett, 2012;Mavroudi and Warren, 2013). Rather, in treating students as distinct subjects of study, research on student mobility has focused on the causes and effects of individual moves of students and in the process has over-valorized the migration of the individual.…”

Being a young and foreign researcher in South Africa: Towards a postcolonial dialogue

“…Schuermans et al ., ), conversations with South African activists and academics urged us to reconsider how our research projects – paid for by Belgian taxpayers – would contribute to the daily struggles of the underprivileged in South Africa. As indicated by Rubin and Hammett in this issue, scholars from the North are often viewed with suspicion of allegedly using a country like South Africa as a site of ‘knowledge extraction’. Much more than is the case in Belgium, South African academia is also characterized by a close‐knit cooperation between scholars, state actors and local communities.…”

Reflections on the politics and practices of knowledge production beyond the Anglo‐American core: An introductory note

“…Schuermans et al, 2010), conversations with South African activists and academics urged us to reconsider how our research projects -paid for by Belgian taxpayers -would contribute to the daily struggles of the underprivileged in South Africa. As indicated by Rubin (2012) and Hammett (2012b) in this issue, scholars from the North are often viewed with suspicion of allegedly using a country like South Africa as a site of 'knowledge extraction'. Much more than is the case in Belgium, South African academia is also Special focus -Geographies of the discipline characterized by a close-knit cooperation between scholars, state actors and local communities.…”

“…The concerns raised by Houghton and Bass and Hoogendoorn on the difficulties of navigating entry into the academy outside of the Anglo‐American core will resonate with peers and colleagues across the globe. Hammett's paper on the transgressive and unsettled experience of the transnational postdoctoral fellow (or postdoc) also comments on this, while resonating with a second theme explored by Schuermans and Newton , Fraser and Rubin : the pursuit of a more open, critical and equal dialogue and conversation not only across but also to undermine the core/periphery dichotomy. This may be viewed in two ways.…”