Description of the project

The problem of hierarchy in international higher education (HE) is central to contemporary studies of universities. As a part of the discussion on this problem, there is also a growing trend of criticizing division on centre and periphery for being unhelpful in conceptualizing international HE.

The novelty of the project lies in presenting that such critics conflate two very different traditions of writing about centres and peripheries of HE. The first of the traditions has its roots in the Marxist works of Immanuel Wallerstein that were inspired by Third-world anti-colonial movements. The second tradition comes from Joseph Ben-David who was a conservative.

For Wallerstein the division between centre and periphery is historical and strongly connected with economic development. For him, HE is mostly part of the state apparatus, which is strongly determined by the state’s economic position (peripheral, semi-peripheral, or central). Ben-David sees science and HE as strongly independent from the economy. In his perspective, the hierarchy between the centre and peripheries in HE is established mostly on culture and talent. Each tradition is influential, but most scholars conflate the influences of one and the other. The main research question of my project is: how Wallerstein’s and Ben-David’s traditions transform our thinking about international HE?

The project will answer that question by applying those traditions to a comparative analysis of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and the University of Warsaw (UW). The most common way of using this division suggests that universities in Poland would be described as semi-peripheral or peripheral and the best university in Ireland as central. However, HE in those countries is rarely compared using those categories, and my research will show that each tradition will create a very different classification of those two institutions. Because of that, the main objective of the project is to explain the differences between the two main traditions of writing about centre and peripheries and how each of those traditions would change the perception of the international position of UW and TCD. Realizing this objective will help to clarify the discussion on hierarchy in international HE, and rethink its basic theoretical assumptions.

During the project, there will be conducted a detailed comparative analysis  Wallerstein’s and Ben-David’s approaches to write on centers and peripheries. To go beyond existing comparisons, the deeper conceptual background behind the notion of centres and peripheries in the works of these thinkers will be reconstructed. Wallerstein’s case requires an analysis of works by Prebish, Amin, Małowist, Braudel, Chase-Dunn as potential sources of inspiration in terms of understanding international higher education. Ben-David is inspired by Schills and Freedman and in turn inspires Schott. The wide access to their works provided by the TCD will help me to accomplish that. 

Then, using secondary sources analysis of TCD and UW contemporary history will be conducted. It will help to see those two institutions from the perspective of longue durée of the capitalist world-system. Finally, the recent auto-presentation of those universities will be studied. It will involve gathering texts from TCD and UW websites, social media, and conducting interviews with the employes of those institutions. This will show how much each of the two conflicting traditions (Wallerstein’s and Ben-David’s) corresponds with the contemporary image of those universities. It will present how each tradition can help us rethink the dominant discourses of HE. 

The postdoc project is financed by the Polish National Agency for Academic
Exchange. Franciszek Krawczyk is the Principal Investigator and Andrew G. Gibson is the research mentor of the project

Photo by John Brady on licence CC BY-SA 4.0