The pandemic has precipitated a global economic downturn: the widespread closing of schools, the restriction of educational activities in colleges and universities, not to mention the partial breakdown of the internationalization of higher education(Aristovnik et al. 2020; Camilleri 2021; Khan 2021; Kleibert 2021; de Velde et al. 2021). This policy workshop as the final event of the Post-Covid Citizens research project funded by EERA-GENE award (https://eera-ecer.de/about-eera/awards/global-education-award/projects-funded-2021/) intends to generate a fruitful debate about the role of higher educational governance in facilitating a resilient post-Covid recovery by supporting how institutions can plan for the future (Hill, Salter, and Halbert 2018; Merkel and Lührmann 2021; Miller 2021; Yang 2020). The presented research project with the specific focus on international students’ future expectations in a Central European context is aimed at analysing how international students with a hope of becoming reflexive, relational, and critical global citizens can make sense of the present constantly changing higher educational environment and the future post-Covid time (Amadasi and Holliday 2018; Beckert 2016; Beech 2014; Borup et al. 2006; Facer 2013; Fourcade 2021; Isin and Ruppert 2020)

The ambition and scope of this workshop is to generate, formulate and bring into reality the emergent potentialities of universities. To reach this rather ambitious aim the workshop will be organized around reflections of the invited speakers. It leads us to question and reflect upon the current understanding of the state of internationalization in Central Europe based on the result of the project. Finally, participants try to illuminate original lines of discovery, practice and reflection. The following elements have been identified as in particular need of address: • Simultaneous existence both within and outside nation states • Social and institutional embeddedness when social environment and social connections are equally transforming. • Geographical imaginaries of the national and the transnational at times of mobility restrictions • Engaged learning: problem-centred reflectivity and contextual engagement in shifting educational context of Covid-19 • The role of universities to support students develop into political agents of change • Internationalization of Higher Education from governance perspective: a cultural ecological approach

In answer to the recently published UNESCO research report and policy document, Reimagining Our Future Together“ this event by focusing on perceived social, political or cultural tensions of international students in Central Europe intend to come up with recommendations to two policy areas: global citizenship education and the internationalization of higher education).By doing so it intends to join to the futile debate underscoring „the pivotal role of of universities in resilient recovery in radically reconfiguring our place and agency” in the face of Covid 19(Education et al. 2021) Disucssant: Jani Ursin Finnish Institute in Educational Research Invited speakers: Prof.Dr. Ian Grosvenor University of Birmingham,School of Education Emeritus Professor of Urban Education History Director of the Voices of War & Peace Centre Prof. Keri Facer University of Bristol Participating Researchers: Eszter Neumann; Christian Quvang; Angelo Von Gorp; Ian Grosvenor; Iveta Kastere; Paulina Korsnakova. Project Leader: Gyöngyver Pataki Research Associate Centre for Social Sciences, HAS Centre of Excellence, Institute for Political Science .

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