Events

Each year, HKU welcomes a new and dynamic cohort of students for the MEd programme in Comparative and Global Studies in Education and Development (CGSED). The 25 students in the 2017/18 are as dynamic as their predecessors. They come from 9 countries/jurisdictions, namely:

Croatia

China Mainland

Ethiopia

Hong Kong

Myanmar

Philippines

South Sudan

USA

Uzbekistan

Three are studying part-time (two years) and 22 are studying full-time (one year). CERC is delighted to welcome the group, and much looks forward to working with them.

By Barbara M. Kehm

Chair: Jisun Jung

Date: September 14, 2017 (Thursday)
Time: 12:45 – 14:00
Venue: Room 205, Runme Shaw Building
This presentation is based on a comparison of women as leaders of higher education institutions in the UK and in Germany. As of 2013, only 17% of Vice Chancellors of UK universities and 12% of presidents of German universities were women. The presentation discusses findings from a small explorative study consisting of interviews with eight female Vice Chancellors of British and German higher education institutions. Based on a feminist poststructuralist approach it looks at the ways in which characteristics of ‘ideal’ leaders in academia are discursively produced in a number of gendered ways and at the influence of dominant academic cultures, status of institution and national policy landscapes. From an analysis of the findings I argue that as well as increasing the numerical proportion of women leaders in academia, work also needs to be done to challenge academic cultural practices and dominant gendered conceptualisations of the ‘leader’.

Barbara M. Kehm is specialised in research on higher education, worked at the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER) at the University of Kassel (Germany) and the Institute for Higher Education Research (HoF) at the University of Halle-Wittenberg (Germany). She was a professor and Director in INCHER from 2004 to 2011 before she joined in the Glasgow in 2013. She has published extensively (more than 30 books and more than 250 book chapters and journal articles) on issues of internationalisation, changes in doctoral education, new forms of governance and processes of professionalization. She has been a member of a variety of academic advisory boards as well as the international advisory board of the University of Helsinki (Finland) and currently is a member of the Board of Governors of two German universities. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Damaskus (Syria), RMIT Melbourne (Australia), South West Jiaotong University in Chengdu and BUAA in Beijing (China), the Catholic University in Santiago (Chile) and the National University of Buenos Aires (Argentina).

Please register at: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=51677

You’re cordially invited to the next CERC seminar on the coming Wednesday, 17 May 2017 from 12:45 – 14:00 in Room 203 of Runme Shaw Building:

India’s Aid and Soft Power in Africa: The Case of Education and Training

By Kenneth and Pravina King

Chair: Mark Bray

The core of India’s cooperation narrative with Africa is capacity-building. Though often termed an ‘emerging’ donor, its history of supporting scholarships and training for the ‘South’ goes back as early as 1946. Like China, its more formal mechanisms for supporting training date from 1964, and their academic institutions for the study of Africa and West Asia also, like China’s, date from the early 1960s. Eight years after China’s first Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, India organized a series of India-Africa Forum Summits, providing ambitious targets for concessional loans, as well as for India- Africa educational partnerships. The presentation will examine several of these, along with a discussion of African students in India – a hot topic – and the absence of any Indian parallel to China’s 46 Confucius Institutes in Africa.

Kenneth KING is Professor Emeritus, University of Edinburgh, where he was Director of the Centre of African Studies for 20 years. Since 2006/7 when he was Distinguished Visiting Professor in HKU, Kenneth has worked with Pravina on China’s education aid and soft power in Africa. The book resulting from this research was China’s aid and soft power in Africa (James Currey, 2013)

Pravina KING was administrator of Edinburgh’s Centre of African Studies for 15 years, and organizer of Scotland-Africa ’97.

Date: Wednesday, 17 May 2017
Time: 12:45 – 14:00
Venue:
Room 203 Runme Shaw Building

The presentation is supported by the presenters’ research grant on “China-Africa University Partnerships in Education and Training: Students, Trainees, Teachers and Researchers” from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (RGC/GRF Project No.: HKU842912H).

By Bruce A Collet

Chair: Liz Jackson

To what degree might public schools play positive and supporting roles among migrant communities within which religion provides a sense of security? What do these roles look like? What defines the limitations that schools in liberal democratic states face in specifying and fulfilling these roles? In this talk I examine religion, culture, and the self within the liberal democratic state, with particular emphasis on examining the relationship between autonomy and religious affiliation. I then move to an overview of the social science literature on migration and religion, and the role of religion in integration. Finally, I synthesize the first two parts of the talk by examining lessons public schools might draw from what the social sciences tell us regarding religious security amongst migrant communities, and how school policies might be informed by this work while still remaining true to core liberal democratic principles.

Bruce Collet is an Associate Professor in Educational Foundations and Inquiry at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where he teaches courses in diversity and education, comparative education, and the philosophy of education, and serves as a core faculty member in Bowlinghkch Green’s Master of Arts in Cross-Cultural and International Education program. His main research focus concerns migration, religion and schooling. He is currently working on a book, Migration, Religion, and Schooling within Liberal Democratic States (forthcoming with Routledge, 2017). Dr. Collet serves as Chief Editor of the journal Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education.

Date: Tuesday, 14 February 2017

Time: 12:45 – 14:30

Venue: RM 202, Runme Shaw Building, HKU

Click here for the poster.

All are welcome!