‘Exploring the realities endured by students labelled international: Insights from interculturality and higher education’
Dr Ramzi Merabet
Date: 21st Feb from 14.00 to15.30, ZOOM
Brief Overview
This talk will draw on a recently completed doctoral research to critically examine the experiences of students labelled international and the implications resulting from the ongoing process of hyper-internationalisation and systematic differentiation between home and international students. The talk aims to present three ongoing research directions that are of interest to academics in UK higher education institutions (HEIs) and other study destinations where neoliberal rationality (Brown, 2015) is increasingly gaining momentum. The first direction challenges the underpinnings of the international label and makes use of narratives by students labelled international to tackle deficit discourses and highlight how students are actively positioned “outside the nationally defined realm of demands for educational equality” (Brook, 2018, p.756). The second direction sheds light on how problematic positivist approaches to culture and interculturality (Dervin, 2011) are increasingly shaping the realities endured by students labelled international within and beyond the classroom and compromising their potential to construct any meaningful sense of belonging. The third direction looks at the UK’s HE sector as a whole and makes use of recent statistics to question the current direction of neoliberal HE.
References
Brown, W. 2015. Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. New York: Zone Books.
Brooks, R. 2018. The construction of higher education students in English policy documents. British Journal of Sociology of Education. 39(6), pp.745-761. DOI:10.1080/01425692.2017.1406339
Dervin, F. 2011. A plea for change in research on intercultural discourses: A ‘liquid’ approach to the study of the acculturation of Chinese students. Journal of Multicultural Discourses. 6(1), pp.37-52. DOI:10.1080/17447143.2010.532218
Bio:
Dr Ramzi Merabet is a lecturer in EAP and Intercultural Studies at the University of Leeds. He recently completed a PhD titled: “Belonging, being, and interculturality: A narrative exploration of the experiences endured by students labelled international in a British university” (Merabet, 2023). Ramzi’s research interests comprise critical intercultural studies, internationalisation of higher education, and students’ experiences. He’s currently working on multiple projects informed by his recently completed doctoral research and recently released episode one of IPODs: Interculturality Podcats, a series that aims to make critical interculturality accessible to academics in higher education.
This event is FREE and takes place on Zoom.
Registration closes on 20th February (Tue) at 9am BST. We will email you a zoom link a day before the event. Please email admin@baleap.org if you have any issues with the registration or haven’t received a system-generated confirmation of your registration.
