Coronavirus: International Education in the Time of Global Disruptions Conference

By Dilip -
CFP: Coronavirus and its Impact on International Students: International Education in the Time of Global Disruptions Conference

by Catherine Gomes
The year 2020 will go down in history as the year that got cancelled due to a global pandemic that disrupted global and local systems in an unprecedented and rapid manner. In a relatively short time, the COVID-19 coronavirus became a pandemic with devastating effects on societies, governments and economies world-wide as it challenges the normality of everyday life. Starting out in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the virus’ lack of discrimination about who and where it infects has had an exceptional impact on international education as destination countries and service providers were some of the early casualties of this evolving health crisis. 

The result has been almost daily decisions being made about course delivery options with online delivery being the best possible teaching and learning route in the wake of travel bans, self-quarantine and social distancing in order to limit the spread of the virus on destination country populations. International students have been subject to job losses, been unable to pay their rent or buy food for themselves. Meanwhile international students, especially those from China and of East Asian descent have been reporting heightened racism and xenophobia directed their way.

While COVID-19 has become the quickest acting disruptor the world has ever seen, what are the effects of both the pandemic and the decisions made by governments and education stakeholders on international education? How can international education move forward and what can it do to futureproof itself in the event of another global disruptor? How have international students been impacted by institutional, government and community responses to the pandemic? How have international students dealt with these responses? What role has social media played in the way international education and international students are viewed in destination and sender countries? 

What are the directions and measures international education stakeholders have been taking during the pandemic? What are the directions and measures international education stakeholders should take in order to support international students after the pandemic ends? What lessons are to be learned from the disrupting impact of the pandemic? Is there any fallout from directions and decisions made in response to the pandemic?

While the COVID-19 pandemic is an evolving crisis, it is one that reveals how international education and international students have become ‘disrupted’ in many ways. This conference aims to not only critically examine the impact of a global disruptor on policies, procedures, operations and people around international education but also to open discussion on the direction of future policy and practice in this space. We thus seek papers addressing but not limited to the following issues:

  • The impact of institutional, government and community responses on international students
  • The challenges, strategies and resilience of international students in the face of a global health crisis and institutional, government and community responses
  • The impact of a pandemic on the future of internationalization
  • Supporting international students during and post-pandemic
  • The impact of institutional, government and community responses on stakeholder staff and domestic students
  • The impact of a pandemic on international student employment and employability
  • Communication in a time of crisis
  • Racism and xenophobia perceived
  • Safety and security
  • Welfare and Wellbeing
  • The impact of the pandemic on study and non-study aspects of the international student experience
  • The future directions and measures of international education to support international students

Timeline: Abstracts due: 1 Aug 2020. Abstracts should be 300 words. They must include a title, and author name/s, affiliation/s, and 100 word bio/s.

Decision on abstracts: 30 Aug 2020; Full papers (7000 words) due: 1 Feb 2021

All correspondence (including abstracts and full papers) will be to:
catherine.gomes@rmit.edu.au and helen.forbesmewett@monash.edu

There will be an opportunity to submit invited papers for publication as a special issue in
Journal of International Students.

Website: https://impactinternationalstudentscorona.wordpress.com/


Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the PUDR stat
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certainty which a c
Read more

Albert Camus's lecture 'The Human Crisis', New York, March 1946. 'No cause justifies the murder of innocents'

By Dilip -
The morning after a great historical crisis, you feel as sad and sick as after a heavy night. But there is no aspirin for historical hangovers .. The world is no longer divided into the just or unjust, but into masters and slaves. He who is right is he who enslaves.  Albert Camus     La crise de l'homme : THE HUMAN CRISIS   (Text read by Viggo Mortensen on March 28 2016)   Ladies and Gentlemen: when I was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States of America, I felt some doubt and hesitation. I am really not old enough to give lectures, and I am more at ease with the process of thinking than I am making categorical statements... since I don't feel I have any claim on what is generally called the truth. I shared this reservation and was very politely told that my personal opinion didn't matter. What mattered was that I'd be able to offer some facts about France so that my listeners could form their own opinions. It was then suggested that I might
Read more

Etel Adnan - To Be In A Time Of War

By Dilip -
NB: Etel Adnan, writer, poet, artist and musician was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. This prose poem is the final chapter of her book  In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country .  Read more about her here  - DS To Be In A Time Of War To say nothing, do nothing, mark time, to bend, to straighten up, to blame oneself, to stand, to go toward the window, to change one’s mind in the process, to return to one’s chair, to stand again, to go to the bathroom, to close the door, to then open the door, to go to the kitchen, to not eat nor drink, to return to the table, to be bored, to take a few steps on the rug, to come close to the chimney, to look at it, to find it dull, to turn left until the main door, to come back to the room, to hesitate, to go on, just a bit, a trifle, to stop, to pull the right side of the curtain, then the other side, to stare at
Read more

After the Truth Shower

By Dilip -
Dear Readers Thank you for reading my blog for the past eleven years. (This is a link to the new one) During this time it has had nearly 1.7 million hits; and I have posted over 9500 posts covering a variety of themes. From July 11 to 19, 2022, my blog was withdrawn by the Blogger administration on account of what its machinery suspected to be 'Impersonation'. It took over a week and the efforts of several well-wishers to get it back online I thank them all for their kindness and goodwill  My blog has always been - and remains - non-commercial. I have used it for academic purposes; and to foster a culture of debate and informed commentary in civil society. Because it contains a large amount of material gathered and collated for over a decade, I cannot afford to lose its contents. I hope it will remain undisturbed now and function as an archive. However, I have decided to use a new blog on WordPress as a platform for my newest comments and posts The new blog is titled After the
Read more

Rudyard Kipling: critical essay by George Orwell (1942)

By Dilip -
Mother of Cities to me, For I was born in her gate, Between the palms and the sea, Where the world-end steamers wait  Rudyard Kipling , To the City of Bombay "Few people who have criticized England from the inside have said bitterer things about her than this gutter patriot" : George Orwell IT WAS a pity that Mr. Eliot should be so much on the defensive in the long essay with which he prefaces this selection of Kipling's poetry, but it was not to be avoided, because before one can even speak about Kipling one has to clear away a legend that has been created by two sets of people who have not read his works. Kipling is in the peculiar position of having been a byword for fifty years. During five literary generations every enlightened person has despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there. Mr. Eliot never satisfactorily explains this fact, because in answering the shal
Read more