This article combines Bourdieusian practice with narrative sociomaterial theory to investigate what story of higher education and its purpose is being conveyed to students. Our case study revolves around a Danish university. We conduct a sociomaterial analysis of three university sites: an information day for prospective students, a video of a…

Increasing reliance on market mechanisms in higher education is analysed both as one of the approaches to steering as well as in relation to the consequences of markets for quality and accessibility of higher education. This article goes beyond the normative considerations of market elements as inherently good or bad and the economic theory-guided…

The aim of this paper is to investigate the organization of research in high-performing research groups in an age of increasing competition and pressure from outside and within higher-education institutions. To explore how researchers navigate such pressures and demands, the practice and perceptions of four high-performing research groups in…

The paper takes an interest in consumer behavior in international higher education (HE). It takes qualitative narratives of international student experience as a point of departure for a discussion of the degree to which students conceive of their experience in consumer terms when they evaluate their stays abroad. Intentionally, the group of…

Recently, in the wake of the Bologna Declaration and similar international initiatives, there has been a rapid increase in the number of university courses and programmes taught through the medium of English. Surveys have consistently shown the Nordic countries to be at the forefront of this trend towards English-medium instruction (EMI). In this…

This paper scrutinizes a set of paradoxes arising from a mismatch between contemporary discourses that praise and promote mobility in and internationalization of higher education, and the everyday effects of mobility and internationalization on university teaching and learning practice. We begin with a general characterization of the discourse of…

Language policies have been drafted in Nordic higher education with the obvious, but unproblematised and unchallenged motivation caused by internationalisation. In this article, we analyse the various motivations for drafting language policies in Nordic higher education and the ideological implications of those motivations. We do this by…

Inspired by Bourdieu's ("Homo Academicus, Polity," Cambridge, 1988; "The Logic of Practice, Polity," Cambridge, 1990) ideas of knowledge reproduction, the article presents an empirical mapping of knowledge geographies, as manifest in the curricular practices found within a single international MA programme in Denmark. Following…

State-university relations across Europe have undergone massive transformations, ranging from establishing new control institutions to reaffirming institutional autonomy. In this reform wave Denmark can in many ways be seen as an extreme case as the reforms affecting the Danish higher education system have gone further than in many of the…

Strategic management and leadership has been a vital catchphrase in most European higher education reforms over the past decade, and has in many countries resulted in a strengthening of the top level management tiers. Rectors and Deans are increasingly tasked with the responsibility of turning HEIs into more active, entrepreneurial actors in…