Higher Education Research is one of the focus areas of Utrecht University. In order to analyse and discover the potential for further development, the project ‘Mapping Utrecht University's field of Higher Education Research’ will be undertaken. The project aims are to create an overview of established and emerging research initiatives, and analyse areas for growth, and opportunities for cooperation. 

The mapping exercise will cover all higher education research at UU faculties and centres, as well as (central level) institutional research. It will be looking at publications, PhD projects, UU data collections, funding sources, and external partnerships.  

The thematic reach of the exercise will be guided by the international and state-of-the-art understanding of the HER field. It will thus focus on micro (teaching and learning), meso (organisational), and macro (system) levels, and include contributions from a broad range of disciplines, including interdisciplinary approaches (see Figure 1.1. Higher education research: Mapping the field in Huisman & van der Wende 2022). The methodological approach will be based on recent publications in this area (Danekindt & Huisman, 2020; Kolster, Westerheijden & Vossensteyn, 2018; Tight, 2019).

• dr. Renze Kolster
• Prof. dr. Manon Kluijtmans
• prof. dr. Susan te Pas

Openness challenged: the university at risk? - Institutions for Open Societies 

Openness is a necessary condition for universities to compete and collaborate internationally, to contribute to an open society, to global challenges, and the public good. However, openness cannot any longer be taken for granted in the changing global context. Rising geo-political tensions, security concerns, illiberal trends, internal tensions in the EU, jeopardize institutional autonomy, academic freedom and potentially weaken the university’s ability to play its role as a core institution of the open society.  Read more: Openness challenged the university at risk.pdf

Past events:

• Launch of Openness Challenged University at Risk 29 sept 2022.pdf by Marijk van der Wende (UU)
• Dialogue 1 The Role of Universities in Promoting Democracy.pdf 29 Sept 2022 with John Douglass (UC Berkeley) based on his recent book: Neo-Nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats and the Future of Higher Education. John’s Hopkins University Press, 2021 (open access) and James Kennedy (UU) 
• Dialogue 2 Academic Freedom in the EU - a legal perspective.pdf   22 November 2022 (11.00-12.30 hrs)  With  Kurt Deketelaere (KULeuven) & Sacha Garben (College d’Europe). Discussant: Lavinia Kortese (UU) 
• Dialogue 3: Current threats viewed from 200 years of university history 12 December 2022 (12.30-14.00 hrs) with William Kirby (Harvard University) launching his new book Empires of Ideas. Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China, Harvard University Press, 2022.  Discussant: Paul Ziche (UU).  

The project aims to explore and explain the differences in the perception and implementation of internationalisation as manifest in the academic disciplines and 
professional fields, as a way to improve our understanding of internationalization and to better inform institutional policy.

To this end, a refined (new) conceptual model is being developed to be explored and tested in a range of disciplinary and professional fields

• Uliana Furiv
• dr. Renze Kolster

See projectwebsite 

Published in: China and Europe on the New Silk Road: Connecting Universities Across Eurasia. Edited by Marijk van der Wende, William C. Kirby, Nian Cai Liu, and Simon Marginson. Oxford University Press, 2020.