Research meeting of the Section of Knowledge, Transformation, and Society (KiTeS), University of Twente, with guest-researcher Jelena Brankovic, who will give a presentation followed by questions and discussion. For more information please contact the KiTeS secretariat. You are welcome!
abstract
Today, more than ever before, universities world over are being observed, compared, and evaluated through the lens of ever-expanding transnational data and information infrastructures. Often, in expert as well as popular discourses, this practice is associated with the emergence of global university rankings in the early 2000s and their growing salience ever since. However, rankings are only a recent addition to a much older practice of systematic, repeated, and recorded observations of higher education institutions across countries and even globally. The presentation will offer a closer look at the available evidence of the practice of creating and sustaining a transnational census of universities and other kinds of higher education institutions throughout the 20th century, whereby the focus will be on the information infrastructures that have made said census possible. Implications of this practice for contemporary debates in higher education will also be discussed.
Bio: Jelena Brankovic is senior researcher at the Robert K. Merton Center for Science Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She is a sociologist with an interdisciplinary background and an interest in theoretical, qualitative, and historical research. Her research focuses on the infrastructures and practices of comparison and quantification, global and transnational governance, with particular attention to organizations and the university sector. Jelena holds a PhD in sociology from Ghent University. Until 2023, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University.
