This symposium brings together researchers from the Ethical Internationalization in Higher Education in times of global crisis (EIHE) Project, with other researchers and practitioners of higher education internationalisations, through a specifically methodological and pedagogical research focus.

Responding to the global internationalization push in higher education (Rhoads and Szelényi, 2011), the EIHE project (funded by the Finnish Academy 2012-15) addressed questions of ethics and higher education internationalisation(s) through a mixed-methods research project involving over 20 universities in 9 countries (de Oliveira Andreotti et al 2016). This proposed symposium follows on from a WERA Focal symposium of the WERA Global Ethics in Higher Education-International Research Network (WERA GEHE-IRN) at AERA, April 2016, and answers to the ECER conference theme on the distinct contributions of educational research and researchers, and to the NW22 Special Callto advance inter-disciplinary understanding and learning about internationalisations of higher education.This symposium addresses these intersecting interests using the lens of research methodology and methodological reflections (Tight 2012).  It takes as a starting point the embeddedness of internationalisation and research within the systemic changes to higher education. Internationalisation is thus a figure for ‘troubled’ higher education in age of complexity. Responding to the NW22 Special Call to readjust research approaches towards systemic change, the symposium addresses questions of how knowledge, research and teaching may be reconceptualised in more holistic, cross-disciplinary and transversal ways, through methodological inquiry and approaches. It answers the Special Call interests in furthering practical cross-cultural collaboration, fostering openness to cultural and value-based diversity, and advancing non-dominating, equitable international research collaboration. The symposium will contribute to the enrichment and convergence of higher education research initiatives and networks as a learning community focused on researching HE internationalisation.

The papers highlight the opportunities and openings offered by the methodological exploration of inter- and trans-disciplinarity, in the interest of advancing pluralistic, decolonial and social justice focused research. Innovative and creative research methodologies offer a powerful shared space for a global network of researchers of higher education internationalisations, while opening up fresh possibilities for new research perspectives, partners and partnerships.

The EIHE group seeks to enable higher education to seek decolonial and diversal pathways (de Oliveira Andreotti 2011a; 2011b), making it more possible to act with responsibility over distance (Massey 2009). Responding to critiques of structural and cultural inequalities (McEwan, 2009); uneven production and dissemination of knowledge, and unequal distribution of wealth and labour (Spivak, 1999), reflecting a continuing problem of neo-colonialism (de Oliveira Andreotti 2011b; Altbach 2015), this research group is committed to epistemological pluralism; widening options and offering a sense of hope (Williams 2010). Imagining research ‘otherwise’ (Kenway and Fahey 2009), requires a shared ethical approach that makes inequities visible, allowing difference and dissent, yet building and enabling solidarity amongst higher education researchers as a community embodying and expressing differences. EIHE research experiences have highlighted key methodological challenges for doing research on ethical internationalisation. These include: the alignment of critical perspectives with the interpretation and generalisability of empirical findings; institutional and geographical diversity of research sites; contextual and disciplinary diversity of respondents and researchers, and the variety of disciplinary identities and roles and educational practice settings.

These key ideas and methodological challenges are explored and extended in this symposium. The opening paper uses the biographical narrative interpretive method to understand student experiences of internationalization. The next paper historicises research and research questions. The third paper focuses on performative and ethically pluralist uses of social cartography. The final paper explicitly integrates sociolinguistic and pedagogical perspectives on ‘translanguaging’ and ‘lingua franca’ to create possibilities for ethically working through research, teaching and learning relationships, while cultivating interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives.

Altbach, P. (2015) Knowledge and Education as International Commodities: The Collapse of the Common Good, International Higher Education 28, 2-5. de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2011a). The political economy of knowledge construction. Globalization, Societies and Education, 9(3-4), 307-310. de Oliveira Andreotti (2011b) (Towards) decoloniality and diversality in global citizenship education, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 9:3-4, 381-397 de Oliveira Andreotti, V. et al (2016): Social cartographies as performative devices in research on higher education, Higher Education Research & Development Kenway, J.; Fahey,J. (2009) Imagining research otherwise, in Kenway, J.; Fahey,J. (Eds.) Globalizing the Research Imagination. London: Routledge 1-39 Massey, D. (2009) Responsibilities over distance, in Kenway, J.; Fahey,J. (Eds.) Globalizing the Research Imagination. London: Routledge McEwan, C. (2009). Postcolonialism and development. London: Routledge. Rhoads, R. A., & Szelényi, K. (2011). Global citizenship and the university: Advancing social life and relations in an interdependent world. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Spivak, G (1999) A critique of postcolonial reason: toward a history of the vanishing present. Cambridge: Harvard University Press Tight, M (2nd ed 2012) Researching Higher Education. London: Open University Press Williams, P. (2010) ‘Outlines of a better world’: Re-routing postcolonialism, in Wilson, J. et al (Eds) Rerouting the Postcolonial: New directions for the new millennium. London: Routledge.