This panel offers a synthesis of the past three years of collaboration of members of the WERA international network (IRN) on global ethics in higher education. This panel will focus on ethics in internationalization of HE. The papers address how trans-national subjects, relations and ideals are constituted and framed, their historicity, political economy, and implications for educational practice and research in higher education. Global ethics is a growing field of study with a strong liberal foundation that addresses multiple and complex dilemmas including the availability of resources, violence, migration, poverty, exploitation, consumption, trade, tourism, and humanitarian intervention (Widdow 2011, see also Pogge and Horton 2008, Trembley 2010).

 In this network we draw on multiple influences including critical, discursive, postcolonial, decolonial, and indigenous orientations to recast a situated and critical working definition of global ethics that includes and also moves beyond liberal and humanist definitions of the term. This literature includes discussions about the impact of globalization (Bauman 1998, Appadurai 2001), the political economy of knowledge production and marginalisation (Nandy 2000, Mignolo 2002, Altback 2011), processes of learning to face complexity, uncertainty and inequality (Spivak 1999, Brydon, 2004), and ‘global citizenship’ (Dower 2003, Andreotti 2006, Rizvi 2007, Abdi and Shultz 2008).

In this panel panellists examine and problematize engagements and representations in HE focusing on global ethics. Network members have shared a commitment to uphold the role of university as critic and conscience of societies with the potential to offer insights into problematic historical and normalized patterns of the present, as well as into different possibilities for the future The discussion about the role and place of higher education (including research and education) in globalizing and interdependent societies is the central theme of this panel.

Abdi, A and Schultz, L. (Eds.) (2008). Educating for Human Rights and Global Citizenship. New York: New York State University Press. Altbach, P. (Ed.) (2011). Leadership for World-Class Universities: Challenges for Developing Countries. Routledge: New York. Andreotti, V. (2006). Soft versus critical GCE. Development Education: Policy and Practice, 3(Autumn): 83-98. Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalization: the human consequences.New York: Columbia University Press. Brydon, D. (2004). Cross-talk, postcolonial pedagogy, and transnational literacy. In Home-work: postcolonialism, pedagogy, and Canadian literature, ed. Cynthia Sugars, 57- 74. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Dower, N. (2003). An introduction to global citizenship. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mignolo, W. (2002)The geopolitics of knowledge and the colonial difference, The South Atlantic Quarterly, 101(1): 57–94. Nandy, A. (2000). Recovery of indigenous knowledge and dissenting futures of the university. In S. Inayatullah and J. Gidley (Eds.), The university in transformation: Global perspectives on the future of the university. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey. Pogge, T., Horton, K. (2008). Global ethics: Seminal essays. St Paul: Paragon House Rizvi, F. (2007). Philosophical Perspectives on Lifelong Learning. Lifelong Learning Book Series, 11 (11):114-130. Spivak, G. (1999). Imperatives to re- imagine the planet/Imperative zur neuerfindung. Tremblay, R. (2010) The Code for Global Ethics: Ten Humanist Principles. Amherst: Prometheus Books. Widdow, H. (2011) Global Ethics: An Introduction. Durham: Acumen Publishing.