Call for Proposals

CHER 2026 Annual Conference
“Redefining Higher Education in an Era of Shifting Geopolitics”

Call for Proposal

The beginning of the 21^st century paved the way to a new season of expansion of the economy, mostly pushed by de-regulatory trade, as part of globalization processes. For higher education, this phase meant declining the local-global antinomy with the dominion of the latter, imposing to the former readaptations. In practical and policy terms, in many contexts globalization materialized with more budgetary pressures, but also with more challenges and opportunities. This context, whose origin might be traced as early as in the 80s, contributed to the development of the European community of higher education as a research field. In fact, globalization has confirmed the neo-liberalization process of academia, with States governing at-the-distance to obtain “more with less”. Institutional autonomy, in many regards, brought collaboration and competition in a worldwide race for “excellence”. This stage generated also at least a couple of factors. One is the increasing role of technology, with AI, and their implementers, representing the new frontier in both opportunities and challenges. Second, the race for new forms of recognition – with China being the first to explore ways to rank universities globally. This overall openness has implied, on one hand, students’ and academics’ mobility – a practice coherent with the original idea of the university itself since its inception in Europe. On the other hand, globalization represented an expansion towards universal access in higher education, including consumeristic perspectives therein.

Despite these developments the new historical phase we appear to beliving, depletes globalization with an ongoing crisis in terms of, ultimately, dominant roles. The US seems to be redefining its own role as a global leader, with increasing uncertainties about the role of universities and academic research in this scenario. Such change, along with continuing rise in Chinese standing, urges Europe to respond, also as a regional actor (i.e. European Union, European Research Area, and others). Along with ongoing forms of collaboration among countries, we witness an increasing pressure to re-nationalize science and higher education to meet first-order national needs, such as safety and economic sustainability. Yet, the shifting geopolitics permeates also the values domain – the “culture war”, critics on Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI), woke, and practices of “cancel culture” being all examples of how academia is inevitably located in the middle of sensitive tectonic fault lines.

This scenario illustrates how shifts in country hierarchies can disrupt consolidated center-periphery relationships. This change poses also questions about the role of universities – a topic we wish to deepen knowledge upon. For instance: to what extent are universities free to operate? And to what extent universities are asked to serve their own main funder, typically the sovereign State they are based in? This latter point has been overtly shown for instance in the US, namely in denying Federal funding if universities fail to revert specific scientific or even political stances (e.g., banning “gender” and stigmatizing “pro-Pal” movements as ipso facto forms of antisemitism). The issue goes beyond some striking news per se. These examples demand an overarching reflection about the economic, social, and civic role of the universities.

The theme of the 2026 CHER conference is an ideal context to offer the opportunity for such broad reflections. We consider whether higher education institutions drive economic, cultural, and political change in society or if, under some circumstances, they are limited to carrying out specific directives (i.e., leader vs. implementer role).

Under this lens we propose to read the current most burning issues in higher education. We pay attention to the leeway of freedom that universities (actorhood being at transnational, national, institutional, middle management, and both personnel and students) have in leading and/or witness change. We focus on how universities navigate new forms of protectionism, brand-new widespread forms of hybrid wars, and the interplay of collaborations and competitions therein. We investigate how universities deal with the role of students, highlighting the current and increasing challenges in terms of activisms, new forms of services, new pedagogies, including also AI, and old and new forms of discrimination.

We invite both theoretical and empirical contributions that offer insights into higher education across key domains: education, research and innovation, third mission and impact, as well as governance and internationalization. The conference, following the tradition of the community of scholars in the field, is multidisciplinary, welcoming any disciplinary background provided the contributions are justified by solid research design and/or theoretical ground.

While we offer some guiding questions for each area below, these are certainly not exhaustive, and we strongly encourage the exploration of other research questions or topics, especially for those contributions positioning in the scholarly side of higher education as a research field.