The paper argues that there is need for a transnational historical sociology of higher education. The argument is organised as follows:

Critique

• Higher education studies (HES) is a broad field that covers a range of professional, intellectual questions as well as particular theoretical and methodological approaches (MacFarlane, 2012; Tight, 2014). The paper reviews several important HES texts (f.x. Amaral et al., 2018; Zgaga et al., 2016). The historical dimension is either absent, limited, or non-explicit, or where some historical development is provided it is disconnected from relevant contemporaneous processes such as the historical shift to embedded neoliberalism in the form of multilevel governance and legal orders.
• In the treatment of neoliberalism (Bottrell and Manathunga, 2019; Manathunga and Bottrell, 2019) there is little appreciation that neoliberalism has its own transnational history not coterminous with policy enactments.
• HE has been studied in relation to the dynamic local-global relationships, global flows, and the concept of vernacular globalisation (Marginson, 2006; Ngo et al., 2006) drawing on the anthropologist Arjan Appadurai.  This emphasises a spatial more than an historical dimension.  Robert Lingard introduced a temporal dimension into policy sociology (Lingard, 2021). It is not clear how this is distinct from Lingard’s own articulation of policy borrowing or Ball’s policy trajectory approach and remains within a nation-state framing. His discussion of ‘milieu’ or ‘ere’ is promising but remains within a Foucauldian frame which renders the transnational as intertextuality or policy assemblages.

Learning from global/transnational history and global historical sociology

• Debates within historical and sociological scholarship offer fruitful avenues to build on existing HES (Go and Lawson, 2017; Hobson, 2017; Iriye, 2013), particularly the critique of methodological nationalism and Eurocentrism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002). While transnational organisations are a feature of HES/policy sociology there is need to more fully engage with studies of empire and imperialism, and the complex path dependencies that they introduce (Mahoney, 2000; O’Hearn, 1994).
• Conducting a transnational historical sociology is highlighted by rejection of Euro-exceptionalism, a global logic of confluence, that analytical scale depends on the object of inquiry (Hunt, 2014), inquiries are organised around transnational space rather than assuming the primacy of nation/state, objects of inquiry organised around transnational themes, periodisation such as historical conjunctures (Spielman, 2018), and provincializing Europe (Chakrabarty, 2009).

Case studies

The paper then discusses two illustrative examples,

• The emergence of a nativist politics of belonging in Danish HE:
  • situates this in three temporal flows as an explanatory frame guided by conjunctural analysis and path dependency
    • welfare system as a set of public goods framed by an assumption of an homogenous linguistic and cultural ethnos that set basis for the political articulation of welfare chauvinism post-1973 and intensified post-2007/8
    • the conjunctural shift from Keynesianism to neoliberalism
    • integration into EHEA and global HE that promotes mobility and English for teaching and research performativity, making language the nodal point for a nativist politics of belonging.
• Irelands contemporary peripherality examined through the role of Irish universities in production of imperial knowledge:
  • Examined through the transnational theme of peripherality, and processes of incorporation/peripheralization in the context of British imperialism,
    • The establishment of three new universities in Ireland in 1845 discussed as the further incorporation of Ireland into the British empire.
    • The role of the universities as producers of imperial knowledge and new agents of imperial administration is related specifically to the colonial project of firstly mapping Ireland and then India; the technical and epistemological knowledge embodied in Irish imperial engineers and administrators central to British geopolitical interest.

The paper works with three sets of literature, 1. It analyses several anthologies related to European HES that act as exemplary of a) the general orientation of HES (anthologies under the Peter Lang ‘Higher Education Policy and Research’ series), and b) two anthologies dedicated to analysing the relationship between neoliberalism and HE. The selection has tried to capture the work within HES that engages in cross-national analyses of largely European policy formation, enactments, and effects. It would be inappropriate to draw on texts that only focused on national HE (single institutions, internal policy dynamics that do not engage with supranational processes, small-scale ethnographies, etc.). As anthologies, they offer the potential for multiple voices and perspectives. As a global phenomenon, neoliberalism present HES scholars with an opportunity to view neoliberalism as global and transnational. 2. A cluster of texts from HES and policy sociology are analysed. These texts are by key HES scholars who have explicitly discussed the transnational character of European and global HE. They have introduced innovative ideas such as glocalization in HE policy development, policy borrowing, have studied the role of transnational organisations such as the OECD, and have conducted substantive work in relation to non-European and North American HE. These ideas are also noted for offering productive bases for conducting explicit historical and transnational research. 3. A number of key contributions to global history, transnational history, and global historical sociology are engaged with to identify a) key debates that can frame the construction of a transnational historical sociology of HE, and b) key themes for critiquing HES. Analysis of the texts in 1) and 2) use the following criteria, • How is the nation/nation-state depicted in the texts? • How is the global depicted in the texts? • What kind of periodisation is operationalised in the analyses? • Are transnational themes examined as transnational or contained within mostly national containers?

o HES mostly assumes the nation-state as a natural frame for analysing policy and neglects the imbrication of nation, nation-state, empire and colonialism o Consequently, HES tends to speak from the experience and perspective of the hegemonic centres of western power where the core’s periphery and the global other are just manifestations of the core’s history – they lack their own agency, productive knowledges, histories – therefore the need to critique this and construct other approaches o HES and policy sociology have limited engagement with debates in historical and sociological on the global and transnational. However, there are a number of conceptual and analytical innovations in HES and policy sociology that can be built upon through an engagement with these debates. o For instance, methodologically, a transnational historical sociology of HE can be constructed upon certain strategies: • Transnational space • Transnational themes • Conjunctural analysis that can exemplify the transnational themes. o The case studies illustrate just some ways that a transnational historical sociology of HE can be conducted, making the researcher sensitive to certain ways of approaching empirical studies, framing them in relation to transnational themes and space, contingent path dependencies, empire, historical conjunctures, different temporal flows, etc.

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