A cursory glance over education scholarship over the past 30 years, reveals a peculiar distinction. Out of all the articles available in the ERIC (Education Resource Information Center) database, published between 1990 and 2020, 562 articles bear some variation of the moniker ‘Central and Eastern Europe’ in the title. Curiously, ‘Western Europe’ appears in 71 articles, most of them (37) dating back to the period from 1990 to 2000. This means that the former is used almost 8 times as often as the latter. Such exceptional grouping together of a significant part of continental Europe is rarely questioned, though it merits a deeper discussion (Nygård & Strang, 2017). While on the surface it may seem a geographical distinction, the precise countries and their groups which are referred to as such in publications differ greatly. Moreover, nearly none of such grouping is observed for other parts of Europe. Whenever the title of an article refers to ‘Europe’, it is reasonable to expect that the research presented comes from the western part of the continent, however, if it comes from the central or eastern part (geographically speaking), ‘Europe’ usually needs a qualifier. There are several practical reasons for this practice, for example, in light of international publishing requirements, it is now often used by scholars based in the region as it helps to expand readership and improve one’s chances of publication, especially when research in smaller countries of the region is concerned. Yet, we believe that it tends to epistemically lump together vastly different countries with different social contexts, histories and approaches to education (Dakowska, 2017). Moreover, it also poses Central and Eastern Europe as an ‘other’ inside of Europe wherein (Western) Europe is considered the norm and (Central and Eastern) Europe remains relevant to the extent it strives to reach that norm as it was expected to do during the transition period (Cerych, 1995). This paper endeavours to interrogate the early conception of the notion of Central and Eastern Europe by analysing the international scholarship in higher education research from 1990 to 2000. We aim to elucidate the emergence of Central and Eastern Europe as a research unit and critically interrogate its discursive construction as the ‘other’ in opposition with the dominant concept of ‘Europe’.

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