Suchergebnisse

Designing bioethics curriculum for international postgraduate students is a challenging task. There are at least two main questions, which have to be resolved in advance: (1) what is a purpose of a particular teaching program and (2) how to respectfully arrange a classroom for students coming from different cultural and professional backgrounds. In our paper we analyze the case of the Erasmus Mundus Master of Bioethics program and provide recommendations for international bioethics education. In our opinion teaching bioethics to postgraduate international students goes beyond curriculum. It means that such a program requires not only well-defined goals, including equipping students with necessary skills and knowledge, but also it should first and foremost facilitate positive group dynamics among students and enables them to engage in dialogue to learn from one another.

The paper investigates the approaches employed for attracting international full-degree students in three countries on the periphery of Europe/the European Economic Area: Norway, Poland and Portugal. These countries, considered semi-peripheral regarding international student recruitment, have shorter traditions for incoming mobility than countries that are major recruiters and which have been the focus of previous research on attracting international students. The paper analyses national policies and strategies, focusing on their emergence, rationales and instruments. The study is comparative, aiming to find commonalities and differences in the approaches of these countries further to the changing global environment in higher education. The major finding is that semi-peripheral countries appear to employ different strategies and resort to other comparative advantages than the largest student recruiters, exploiting political, cultural or geographical aspects rather than educational assets. The findings highlight the need for these countries to identify their distinctive attraction capacities and assets, as well as to be purposeful in choosing their target recruitment regions ; This paper has been developed with support for a postdoctoral fellowship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Grant Number SFRH/BPD/85724/2012 and with support from the Polish National Research Council (NCN) through its research Grant (UMO-2013/10/M/HS6/00561). ; acceptedVersion

Throughout the last decade, the international donor community has developed a plethora of regulatory initiatives for responsible agricultural investments. It remains unclear how such guidelines are invoked in practice in investment cases, and whether their use can prevent conflict and protect local land rights, as promoted. Uncovering how international guidelines work necessitates an understanding of the formal-legal setting and underlying land tenure regimes that shape investment projects. In Uganda, these contexts vary from region to region and investments take place on land held under various tenure regimes, including private, state-owned, and customary land. Based on 8 months of fieldwork in Uganda, I compare three cases of large-scale land investments in different settings and argue that variation in the underlying land tenure systems determines the variation, uneven applicability and effectiveness of global governance mechanisms.

It is now rather well established that most International Relations (IR) theories are
predicated on Western knowledges. This potentially limits their analytical capacity
to explain international relations beyond Western ideological values or interests.
However, in recent years there has been a substantial increase in scholarship not
only critiquing the Western centric nature of International Relations theory but
also exploring the contributions that knowledges from the global South make to
the field of IR theory. Thus, the status quo is shifting, albeit slowly. Nevertheless,
the impact as well as the implication of this shift toward knowledge plurality for
the IR theory curricula has not been paid adequate attention. Consequently, this
article investigates whether the demand for knowledge plurality in the realm of
IR theory research has made inroads into the arena of pedagogy resulting in
the generation of knowledge plural IR theory curricula. Moreover, it examines
the different choices and interpretations made by educators in endeavouring to
create knowledge plural IR theory curricula in various global contexts. Further, it
endeavours to discern the factors that have informed and/or shaped respondents'
curricula and pedagogical choices pertaining to the selection, structuring and
transmission of IR knowledge at tertiary education institutions in different
geographical contexts. Ultimately, it reflects on the implications of the increase
in knowledge plural curricula for the development of greater knowledge plurality
within the discipline.

The purpose of this article is to examine the research advanced in the journal, International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics that represents key insights into international agreements on water and their political, legal, economic and cross-disciplinary dimensions for water governance. The article analyses evidence and lessons learnt over the last twenty years to inform policy through a review of theoretical advances, innovations in principles and policy instruments, outcomes of problem-solving and knowledge gained regarding water agreements and associated institutions. Important international agreement principles of no significant harm and economic frames of water as a 'commons' advance equity and community of interest in relation to water. The studies on water, sanitation and hygiene point to the ways the role of the state can be advanced in achieving Sustainable Development Goals and in complex contexts of water scarcity and public private partnerships. Cross-disciplinary learnings substantiate the existence and utility of multiple water frames in legal arrangements and use of multiple policy instruments. Cross-disciplinary insights are significant in addressing equity, whether through the nascent development of water indicators or in advancing social learning. Water governance frameworks increasingly focus on adaptation by incorporating multiple stakeholders. These findings that advance equity and inclusivity are tempered by crucial lessons in our understanding of the very contested, power-laden nature of water governance that impact agency at multiple scales and policy coordination across sectors of water, food and energy.

This paper provides a distinctive analysis of the value of international intermediation alliances for co-production, based on the way they operate in practice. While much attention is paid to ideal or normative models of co-production, there is less understanding of the complexities that pervade co-production practices in specific contexts or how this shapes outcomes. Despite longstanding critiques and reflection, international partnerships can reinforce unequal power dynamics embedded in already unequal global research and knowledge production circuits. However, such partnerships, despite their structural problems, can also give rise to more informal relations wherein the long-term value of international co-production inheres. We call for a re-examination of these complex sets of informal relations, beyond the structures of partnerships, that enable co-production across local and global divides. Drawing on comparative international evidence, we propose a framework for understanding and action based on the concepts of alliances, allyship and activism. These three characteristics of international co-production partnerships can constitute socio-material infrastructures that help maintain relationships of solidarity and care over time beyond the remit of individual projects. While this is relevant in any co-production context it becomes particularly important in international research projects so that they do not paradoxically reproduce colonising structures of knowledge production in the search for more just cities.