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Starting from the premise that lifelong learning is a significant asset when it comes to enjoying an active ageing process and an important resource for exploring new interests and capacities that were not developed in previous life stages, this contribution explores our findings regarding the participation of older women in higher education in Cantabria, a Northern Atlantic Spanish region. Through analyzing secondary data provided by the main higher education institutions and associations involved with the organization of lifelong learning programmes, it identifies gendered patterns of participation in both the formal and informal educational options. Women's greater involvement in these programmes is analyzed in terms of overcoming a patriarchal traditional culture that in past times had not considered women as active participants in educational spaces. This was particularly clear in the context of the years following the end of the Spanish Civil War and during Franco's dictatorship. Through education, for women, ageing becomes a new life opportunity for self-construction and empowerment as well as for their own decision making in relation to their own life chances. Educational changes implemented in Spain in the last decades have opened up many alternatives to formal education at adult educational centres and university levels. These include informal and semi-formal programmes and educational options opened to people independently of their previous educational backgrounds that provide many opportunities for filling educational gaps to generations of women who could not have consistent access to formal, high-quality training in their youth.

Turkey has been an active member of the Bologna Process (BP) since 2001. This chapter focuses on the impact of the BP on higher education (HE) in Turkey by outlining the reforms that were carried out and the narratives surrounding the changes. The focus of the chapter will be on how the BP has been accommodated, negotiated debated or rejected in Turkey and the societal and political tensions surrounding the process. The chapter is based on the findings of semi-structured interviews conducted with the Bologna experts and the officials of universities in Turkey, who were responsible for the reforms between 2009 and 2016, as well as a review of updated data and the analysis of secondary literature and official texts, such as the National Reports of the BP and the relevant policy documents in Turkey. After a very intense reform process, the policy transfer in Turkey slowed down, and Turkey's discussions, specifically about the BP both at the policy and the university level, became close to non-existent. The chapter aims to analyse the reasons behind the loss of interest in the BP in Turkey by focusing on the critical voices and discussions surrounding the neoliberalisation of HE. The chapter will also refer to how Euroscepticism in Turkey impacted the reform process in HE.

This chapter discusses the role of language in the transformation of two African institutions of higher education, namely the University of Botswana (in Botswana) and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (in South Africa). The transformation of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, which is aimed at addressing the inequalities and other ills of the apartheid era, has taken on board language issues. For instance, isiZulu is being developed and promoted to join English as a language of scholarship. In contrast, the University of Botswana’s transformation does not stem from a political background of oppression. The institutional transformation has to do internationalization and the conversion into a research-intensive university. This transformation, unlike at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, has not taken a strong move to develop and promote Setswana (Botswana’s national language) as a language of scholarship.

The focus of this paper is to compare access to higher education by Syrian refugees in Jordan and Germany. Background of the Syrian refugee crisis and its scope are provided before delving into a description of the university-age population among Syrian refugees in both countries. The nature of access to higher education in both countries is first examined before conducting a comparative analysis of the two. Implications and recommendations for policy and practice are provided.

Purpose – This chapter explores how a group of African academics at a university in South Africa experience belonging at varying levels of geographical scale. It considers how race, class and professional status intersect to influence the scholars’ experiences.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Narrative interviews were conducted with 24 individuals from nine African countries. All were current doctoral or postdoctoral fellows at the University of the Free State. The focus is decidedly qualitative in approach, with an emphasis on understanding the subjectivity of the people under study.

Findings – The interviews reveal that, while participants have struggled to forge a sense of belonging to South African society due to high levels of xenophobia and structural racism, they have found other spaces to validate their professional identities and, hence, forge a sense of belonging. These spaces include certain university departments and meeting places at the university. Importantly, these spaces have a very specific, local location, but are international in their linkages and their orientation. The professional identity of the scholars helps them overcome challenges to traditional modes of belonging based on race and class in the South African context.

Originality/Value – The findings contribute to broader discussions on the scale of migrant belongings and on the increasingly complex ways migrants relate to space and place. It also offers a new perspective on the belonging(s) of international scholars, which is largely understudied in the South African context.

The chapter intervenes in the debate among scholars of legal impact about the extent to which law can change society. Reformers, aims are frustrated when targets of law respond with resistance to court decisions, especially where mechanisms to enforce case law are weak (Hall, 2010; Klarman, 2006; Rosenberg, 1991). Even when law’s targets abide by a law, however, other important studies have demonstrated that organizations can leverage ambiguous language to craft policies in compliance that further their aims (Barnes & Burke, 2006; Edelman, 2016; Lipson, 2001). This chapter examines a case in which a state constitutional provision banning affirmative action was written in relatively unambiguous language and one of its targets announced its intention to comply. Through extensive interviews with University officials, this chapter examines the University of Michigan’s use of financial, technological, and political resources to follow the language of the law while still blunting its impact. These findings suggest that to understand law’s impact on society, we need to reconceive compliance and not only take the clarity of the law and its enforcement mechanisms into account but also attend to the goals, resources, and practices of the groups it targets.

This chapter analyses the Norwegian authorities’ presence on Twitter during the 22 July 2011 terrorist attacks. Twitter activity by two official institutions is analysed in particular, namely, the blood bank at Oslo University Hospital and the Norwegian Police Security Services (PST). Our findings show that the Norwegian authorities were almost completely absent on Twitter during the critical hours of the terrorist attack, and that there was no coordination and synchronisation of communication from the authorities. This official silence allowed the diffusion of speculation and misinformation to take place; these were neither corrected nor addressed, as the analysed PST case shows. In contrast, the blood bank used Twitter to mobilise blood donors to address an acute problem: a shortage of blood to treat casualties. The chapter concludes by offering recommendations to the authorities for future major incidents.