Knowledge production in higher education

Abstract

This edited volume focuses on knowledge production in higher education in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Europe. Its twelve contributions shed light on how academics have deliberated the immensely politicised nature of institutions of higher education and their practices – be these in the context of colonialism, decolonialism, nation-building or political transformation. Cognisant of fragmenting labels in constructions of ‘the MENA’ and of ‘Europe’, our contributors supersede such logics by immersing themselves as subjects and objects of the study at hand, making themselves simultaneously ‘scholar’ and ‘subject’. Therefore, this volume explores the politics of institutes of higher education in view of the scholarly practices that are characteristic of the ways in which the MENA is taught at European universities and how Europe – or increasingly, the European Union (EU) – is discussed at institutions of higher education in the MENA. A reflexive understanding of how we teach and study Europe/the EU at MENA universities and how we teach and study the MENA in Europe is needed to help overcome existing divisions between the Global North and the Global South in knowledge production.