The institutional context of the research is a network of organisations sometimes referred to as “the Soros network”, consisting of mainly of Open Society Foundations (previously Open Society Institute and National Soros Foundations) to which Central European University is partially affiliated as a ‘sister organisation’
The mission of the entire network in existence since the beginning of the transition process, is to assist the democratisation process and to create ‘open societies’ in post-communist countries and in other developing countries, and the source for all its operations are the philanthropic actions and large donations of a single individual, an American multimillionaire of Hungarian origin, George Soros. The network has ambitions of being a non-governmental and transnational policy actor (Stone, 2008), aiming to orient reform towards democratisation, rule of law, human rights and the building of strong civil society. This is realised through a multitude of programs and departments offering financial resources to local partner organisations, running their own programs and interventions, and engaging in research and advocacy on selected issues. Of course, this very clearly involves a project of supporting a degree of economic transformation of societies towards the capitalist and liberal-democratic model and away from communist, nationalist, totalitarian models of state and society.
This network, in which I am institutionally positioned, consists of many institutions: National Soros Foundations operating in various countries in the region of operations (post-socialist and post-communist countries and some other developing country locations), and the central
institution of the network: Open Society Foundations (consisting of two main offices in Budapest and New York, and a few other offices in Europe). The OSF operates a number of programs in various areas of interest, from higher education development, to the rule of law, local government development, policy formulation, Roma rights, women’s rights and others. Stone assesses its significance:
The OSI [OSF] provides an excellent case study of the strategies of transnational activism of private philanthropy. It is an institutional mechanism for the international diffusion of expertise and ‘best practices’ to post communist countries and other democratizing nations. (Stone, 2008: 2)
Due to a partially overlapping interests and location and the same main founder the OSF network is affiliated with Central European University, which is an independently endowed, private graduate university, offering degrees in social sciences, law, business, and environmental science.
This university, which is a specific part of the network, is an American university in Central Europe. The university is both firmly Western and partially also Central European. My particular workplace has been fulfilling part of the university’s traditional regional mission of producing or supporting ‘open societies’ through outreach programs dedicated to working with academics in other regional universities. It is therefore, a space whose very existence entails and makes possible mobility for the participants through various programs related to higher education. My own unit is located between two institutions of the network (OSF programs and CEU). The department is administratively a unit of CEU, and our mission is to share CEU’s resources to help the region we work in. To this end we work with CEU
academics, library and all relevant units to provide programs and resources for the academics who participate in our programs. This forms a unique institutional model of linking academics in the region with CEU, with our own office, and with OSF, and to date the specific format has engaged several thousands academics in around 26 countries. The majority of my interviewees have participated in not one but several programs of this broadly defined network, and often work in institutions who have received direct help from the network in terms of financial support for their development.
Being positioned in this particular department means working with university lecturers, alumni, other professors from the region who are involved in international programs, as well as those who are trying to make use of international programs and English language literature (and pedagogies) for the first time. My own position could also be described as someone who is an agent of this transformation (internationalisation) for some of the visiting faculty, or a link with their international experiences for others.
It is through this institutional network that most of the interviewees were contacted. The sampling approach (Goodson, 2001: 25) was purposive - I was interested in interviewing academics and teaching assistants with an international experience of a certain generation and geographical origin; and it was opportunistic - that is based on those individuals I could access in my own professional network over the course of the research years.
My current institutional and professional positioning, probably as much as my own life experiences, provides an ongoing justification of this research interest. Since I began working
in my department in the summer of 2003, I had come across hundreds of academics from the entire post-communist region in various professional events. These encounters have provided numerous insights into the different ways internationalisation impacts individual academics, the uses to which it may be put in their practice, and the difficulties it may create for their sense of their professional self or their career progression and working lives.
If I had to summarise these pre-analysis and pre-research glimpses of ‘data’, which offered points of departure for the study of the impact of internationalisation on academic identity and practice, I would have to point out just some features of the experience. In some cases, I was struck by the potential importance of the process for many academics. For example, one Estonian academic once recounted to me how she really learnt research skills whilst doing a short scholarship abroad during her doctoral years. She used the metaphor of a light getting switched on for the first time, signifying things falling into place for her as a researcher, after a long period of ‘darkness’ and confusion experienced at home. The learning moment was apparently enabled by the different supervisory styles she experienced when away. It was a comparative perspective of ‘home’ and ‘away’ that turned up time and time again in many conversations. Another Russian academic spoke of becoming a different person after her graduate degree in Germany; she claimed to hardly remember what she was like or what she was thinking before that time abroad, even though she had resumed working at the same department she had originally left as a student. There was hardly a more blunt way of stating that this experience had created or changed her as an academic, even though it was obviously short in comparison to other phases of her educational history and to her current work experience. These small disclosures of aspects of private narratives suggested that
internationalisation can be understood as a truly productive aspect of academic identity construction, or at least a productive discursive resource for portraying a different/newer academic identity.
What was particularly puzzling, was that very similar experiences and meanings were related by graduate students and professionals from a considerable range of post-communist countries. It seemed at first glance as if they had truly come from very similar systems of education. Of course particular experiences were highlighted, valued and used differently by the individuals, depending but it was clear across these differences that the experience was both shared and productive.