International academics in mainland China: What do we know and what do we need to know?

The past decades have witnessed the increasing cross-border mobility of academics, although the COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant challenges to it.

Asia, or the broadly conceptualised ‘Global East’, has developed several attractive destinations for international academics. Among them, is mainland China which is the focus of this webinar.Notably, the most recent literature has identified a new cohort of international academics in China, who are non-Chinese academics with long-term and full-time positions. 

This webinar explores this new trend. The speakers will present a critical review of the existing scholarship, and report findings from three empirical research projects. They will address the following questions: 

• Who are the international academics working in China? 
• What are their work roles, their motivations and challenges in pursuing a career in Chinese academia? 
• Are they satisfied with their (academic) life in China, and will they stay? 
• Can China attract international academics on a large scale in the long run?

Speakers will unpack conceptual and methodological ambiguities in the existing research, propose a new typology to define international academics in mainland China, and discuss future research agendas in this area.

Speakers

• Xin Xu - University of Oxford
• Andrea Braun Střelcová - Max Planck Institute for the History of Science 
• Giulio Marini - UCL IOE
• Futao Huang - Hiroshima University (Japan) 
• Yuzhuo Cai - Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Finland

 This event will be particularly useful for those interested in higher education research.

Related links

• Centre for Global Higher Education
• Department of Education, Practice and Society