Conceptualising the new geopolitics of higher education: Creating a framework for change under conditions of geopolitical uncertainty

In this presentation we introduce a new conceptual framework for investigating the relationship between geopolitics and higher education policy. We argue that transformations in higher education and the socio-political environment around the world require new ways of thinking about their intersections and there is therefore a need to rupture current assumptions around geopolitics. This enables a better accounting of the multifaceted ways in which geopolitical forces interact with higher education policy decisions and actions. Grounded in critical geopolitics, the Scales, Agents, Interests and Opportunity Structures (SAIOS) framework that we have developed opens the prospects for the detailed breakdown of the constituent factors, events, and forces at play when geopolitics and higher education interact. It also challenges currently dominant ideas around territory and world politics including: i) hegemonic notions of world power, politics, and knowledge production, ii) the fixation on the national scale to understand territorial sovereignty and power, iii) the domestic-foreign binary and iv) the over-focus on macro perspectives. This SAIOS framework has been designed to reflect global conditions in the early 2020s and is intended to be adaptable to ongoing shifts in the geopolitical environment as well as applicable to past encounters. As an emerging sub-field of higher education studies, our aim in this presentation is also to further develop the framework, problematising the use of the qualifier "new" and proposing possible adjustments to the framework so that it continues to be a useful heuristic that can be applied across contexts and dimensions.