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Abstract
The rise of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) has prompted concerns over linguistic injustice, educational disadvantage, societal inequality and epistemic homogenization. As EMI tends to generate heated debates, its drivers need to be better understood. Borrowing conceptual frameworks from political science, this article proposes a new understanding of the drivers of EMI, pointing to the introduction of new steering tools in the 1980s to govern Europe's higher education institutions. Conducting Process Tracing in a Dutch university, and drawing on document analysis and interviews with nine "elite participants" – Ministers of Education, University Rectors, Members of the University Executive Board, Faculty Deans and Programme Leaders – we argue that the very first EMI programme at our case university may be traced back to a set of governance reforms in the Dutch higher education sector that introduced key performance indicators and institutional profiling. Responding to calls for linguists to engage with the political economy, we identify previously under-illuminated links between political processes and EMI. We conclude that close attention to the political economy is key to understanding the rise of EMI, and more generally language shift, and ultimately to tackling linguistic injustice that may follow in its wake.

Around the time of the first 'Earth Day', on April 22, 1970, the academic world joined in a virtual explosion of societal interest in a topic that inherently lies in the confluence between 'social problems' and 'public policy' - the ways in which humans use and abuse the natural environment. In the worlds of social movement organizations and policy, that newfound interest showed up in dramatic growth of environmental organizations and a stream of powerful new environmental laws. In the academic world, echoes of the explosion showed up in equally dramatic growth of interdisciplinary 'environmental' programs with an explicit focus on the fact that 'environmental problems' are inherently social problems as well. Over the past decade, a growing body of research has shown that equity issues need to receive greater attention in academia - not just among activists, and not just as the focus of courses on environmental ethics, but as topics that deserve careful academic study and that in many ways are at the core of what we call 'environmental' problems. As David Orr (1992) noted, 'the symptoms of environmental deterioration are in the domain of the natural sciences, but the causes lie in the realm of the social sciences and humanities'. This volume is intended to call this research to attention, but also to encourage its further expansion; far from being the kind of topic that ought to be relegated to a small pigeonhole, issues of equity and inequality deserve to be absolutely central to the study of connections between humans and the habitat that we share with all other life on earth. This volume brings together the leading research on equity and the environment. It features contributions from academics and researchers in the field. This book series is available electronically at website.

The two political works in this text are the product of a time of intense turmoil in Chinese history. Dating from an epoch in Chinese history known as the "Period of the Warring States" (4003 - 221 BC), they anticipate by nearly 2000 years Niccolo Machiavelli's treatises on the same subjects.

UK demand for energy-intensive materials is growing, driving increased emissions in the UK and abroad. UK FIRES is a research programme sponsored by the UK Government, aiming to support a renaissance of UK Industry, compatible with our legal commitment to zero emissions by 2050 by placing Resource Efficiency at the heart of the UK's Future Industrial Strategy. Industry is the most challenging sector for climate mitigation - it's energy efficient and there are no substitutes available at scale for the energy-intensive bulk materials - steel, cement, plastic, paper and aluminium. UK FIRES is therefore working towards an industrial renaissance in the UK, with high-value climate-safe UK businesses delivering goods and services compatible with the UK's legal commitment to zero emissions and with much less new material production. ; EPSRC (EP/S019111/1)