Deploying Internationalisation at Home During Lockdown

Abstract

This is a report on a variety of internationalisation at home (IaH) initiatives coordinated by Bordeaux University since 2020 (the start of the COVID pandemic). IaH is understood as “the purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum for all students within domestic learning environments” (Beelen and Jones 69). On site, IaH programmes are defined in the following ways: 1) The opportunity for domestic students to study with incoming international students enrolled at Bordeaux University. 2) The opportunity to study with students from other universities through multi-institutional or bilateral virtual exchange. The institutional framework was provided by the NewDEAL project (open, student-centered and connected programmes, within a framework of transformative learning). We are therefore in a position to consider how IaH can best be deployed at University. We aim to discuss the merits and challenges of our IaH offer.