Eva Hartmann

My research interrelates educational research sociology and international studies in ways that are informed by my own educational background. I graduated in Sociology and hold a doctorate in Political Science/International Relations. A sociological account of education rejects an understanding of education as just one of many policy fields as political scientists tend to do. But it also avoids a narrow educationalist perspective on education that does not account for the broader societal picture. My own account of sociology of education draws on critical state theory political and economic sociology sociology of professions and knowledge as well as decolonial studies with a view to better understanding the dialectical relationship between society education power and the transnational. The Frankfurt School and in particular teachers like Gayatri Spivak Nancy Fraser Iris Young Juergen Habermas Judith Butler and Bob Jessop had been very formative for my own work. My empirical research focuses on the internationalisation of higher education though it also explores issues of vocational education and further education. I am the leader of the Cambridge Critical Higher Education Research (CCHER) group. My past research scrutinised the nexus between knowledge and development and the role of the World Bank as a knowledge bank. I also examined extensively international and regional qualifications regimes and how they enable cross-border mobility of skilled labour (in particular regulated professions like doctors and engineers). Part of this research was an in-depth study of the role of UNESCO conventions for the recognition of higher education qualifications starting with the UNESCO Lisbon Convention and its role in the Bologna Process aiming to establish a European Higher Education Area. More recently I studied other regional UNESCO recognition conventions as well as the International Convention adopted by the General Assembly in 2019. Taking a sociological perspective I use the study of education policies and recognition regimes as lens to examine the transformation of society the interaction between supra- inter- and transnational institutional arrangements as well as the current geo-political transformation of the global order more generally. My studies shed light on how this transformation impacts academic knowledge creation curation and dissemination. More recently I devoted attention to the role of private actors like quality assurance agencies professional associations as well as multinational companies in setting international education standards. These studies shed lights on an emerging transnational private authority and the relationship between geopolitics and geoeconomics.

[2023] Public diplomacy and international higher education. In: Rizvi Fazal; Beech Jason (eds). Globalization and Shifting Geopolitics of Education International Encyclopedia of Education 4th Edition Elsevier. 2023 pp. 640-647.