The concept of internationalisation is complex and contested, embodying diverse interpretations and perspectives that vary significantly across higher education. Marginson (2023) has recently explored the dominant understandings of internationalisation and highlighted the contradictions and limits of internationalisation, noting the importance of understanding the interactions between concepts such as internationalisation and the ‘larger and changing environment’ (Marginson, 2023 p.2). Internationalisation in higher education is influenced by its social, political and cultural environments and globally we are experiencing an era of extreme uncertainty, what Stein (2021) characterises as the volatility, unpredictability, complexity and ambiguity of contemporary societies. There are complex issues which mean that existing paradigms for internationalised higher education are becoming inadequate (Stein, 2021, p.482). This complexity of current global challenges raises the question of the role of international higher education in solving these issues and whether higher education can or should operate for the common good (Locatelli and Marginson, 2023).

As a crucial element in Higher Education, internationalisation can offer connective ways of creating relevant knowledge around some of the uncertainties and challenges which we face.  Internationally and culturally diverse research and knowledge production (including diversity in disciplinary knowledge; methodological diversity; ethnicity; gender; or race) is integral to ‘good’ science (Olenina et al, 2022). Therefore, the role of internationalisation in knowledge generation is a crucial part of the higher education research and science picture (McGloin, 2021). Moving across and within boundaries, mobile staff and students can act as ‘knowledge brokers’ enabling universities to generate new knowledge relating to global issues through their participation in research, capacity building and internationalisation (Bilecen and Faist 2015, p.218).

However, internationalisation has developed against a background of global divisions and long-standing patterns of inequalities in power, wealth, and cultural influence (Connell, 2007, p. 212; Stein, 2021) and current fragile global relations are intensifying the precarity of international research collaborations, for instance between China and the US (Postiglione, 2021) and across Europe (Courtois and Sautier, 2022). Mobility as part of internationalisation also encompasses immobilities and alongside forced migrations due to political persecution and war, there are asymmetries in resources for higher education and previously colonised contexts continue to experience epistemic injustices (Marginson and Xu, 2023).

This paper focuses on an analysis of the ways in which internationalisation is changing against the current volatile geopolitical context. Considering the lack of plural, democratic and reflexive cross-border relations in higher education, it aims at contributing to critical reflections which have highlighted the need to promote alternative and more equitable approaches to the definitions and practices of internationalisation (Stein, 2021). We centre this exploration on Europe and begin ‘at home’ with one Italian university, and explore the past, current and planned internationalisation activities of this university across Europe and beyond. As well as investing significant resources in the internationalisation of education, and the establishment of a dedicated Centre for research in internationalisation, the university in question is part of a Strategic Alliance of Catholic Research Universities (SACRU) whose mission is to foster global cooperation amongst the partners located in 31 campuses around the world, aiming to advance research and teaching excellence through global collaboration.  In this paper we analyse and map the complex ways in which internationalisation is reforming itself in one discipline, that of Education, and we particularly focus on engagement for ‘common good’ against the changing and volatile picture of international and geopolitical relations. We will draw from this picture some implications for the meanings and purposes of contemporary internationalised higher education and consider how internationalisation can engage with the volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous world in which we live (Stein, 2021).

This paper centres on an analysis of internationalisation in the field of Education in the context of an Italian university which is embedded in the European environment and whose attention to the international dimensions of education research, teaching and knowledge production has recently increased. In this case study, we investigate the underpinning principles, the agents involved, the governance structures and the ultimate aims of the connections and collaborations which may be conducive to alternative and more inclusive approaches to internationalisation. In addition to a comprehensive literature review which explores knowledge building in international higher education and the relationship between internationalisation and the existence of multiple knowledge systems, or ecologies of knowledge (Biesta, 2007), the case study rests on the following data: • A mapping of the internationalisation activity of one international education research centre, exploring its knowledge building activities in an international context • A mapping of the internationalisation activities of one Faculty of Education, exploring its links, resourcing and knowledge building within the university and outside with its European and international partners • A series of interviews with key figures in our chosen Italian university focusing on staff at a range of levels including Vice Rector, Director of International Office, Deans and academics with responsibility for international collaboration, exploring their perspectives on internationalisation against a volatile and changing geopolitical context. Finally, the presentation will reference a related research project which is mapping the SACRU network and has selected four Universities representative of different geographical areas, namely in the United States, Italy, Japan, and Chile. The aim is to understand, in a comparative perspective, how international understanding and reciprocity in cross-border higher education is constructed in these four institutions which stand out, among SACRU members, for having consolidated research units focused on Education and on Internationalisation.

This paper aims to offer alternative perspectives on internationalisation against a fragile geopolitical background by providing both an empirical and theoretical contribution to the current debate on definitions of internationalisation (Marginson, 2023; de Wit, 2024). Adherence to the construction of internationalisation as physical student mobility has contributed to a narrowness of vision for internationalisation (Whitsed, Burgess & Ledger, 2021) and this also enables a continued over-emphasis on elite Anglo-European perspectives in international education (Montgomery and Trahar, 2023). Broader conceptualisations of internationalisation are necessary, including thinking about the role of knowledge generation as an integral part of internationalisation (McGloin, 2021). This paper offers a set of criteria, drawn from the empirical and theoretical work of the research, which reflect an alternative approach to internationalisation, framed not on a neoliberal or economic rationale, but more open in its epistemologies and inclusive of alternative forms of knowledge (Connell, 2017). The paper considers whether the strengthening of intra-regional mobility and knowledge exchange and innovation within more localised blocks such as Europe, the ASEAN region and/or South-South collaborations may offer a stronger bond between the local and the global which will enable the project of internationalisation to engage with the complex challenges of our interconnected world.

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