Abstract:
Recent geopolitical events such as Brexit and the US turning its back on international trade and cooperation create waves of uncertainty in higher education regarding international cooperation, the free movement of students, academics, scientific knowledge, and ideas. Meanwhile China is launching new global initiatives with its New Silk Road (or One Belt One Road) project, which could potentially span and integrate major parts of the world across the Euro-Asian continents. But likely on new and different conditions, also for higher education.

How will the NSR affect European higher education and research? What types of academic flows and activities emerge along the NSR, how do universities respond, under what conditions are these activities taking place, who defines these, based on what values, and do we actually understand these values at all?

About the speakers:
Marijk van der Wende is Distinguished Professor of Higher Education at Utrecht University’s Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance. Her research focuses on the impact of globalization and internationalization on higher education. She is also an affiliate faculty and research associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at the University of California Berkeley and member of the Academia Europaea. Previously she held full professorial positions at VU University Amsterdam (2006-2015), the University of Twente (2001-2016), and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University (Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies), Boston College (Centre for International Higher Education), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Graduate School of Education), and the University of California Berkeley (CSHE).

Marcus Düwell holds a chair for philosophical ethics at Utrecht University. He is director of the Ethics Institute of Utrecht University and director of the Utrecht Research Institute for Philosophy and Religious Studies. From 2005-2012 he was director of the Netherlands Research School for Practical Philosophy. Düwell studied Philosophy, German Literature and Theology in Tübingen and Munich. His PhD-thesis at the university of Tübingen was a philosophical investigation about the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. From 1993-2001 he was academic coordinator of the Interdepartmental Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities at the University of Tübingen. His research interests include bioethics, ethics of climate change and general topics of moral and political philosophy, particular the ethics of human dignity and human rights.