The aim of this article is to provide basic geographic background to assist readers in understanding the geography of North Korea. Although few U.S. geographers have traveled to this country, limited information about North Korea can be constructed and compiled. Sources include interviews of South Korean geographers, all volumes of The National…

During the Second World War, Nordic countries witnessed a large-scale displacement of the population as around 70,000 Finnish children were evacuated to other Nordic countries. While up to 15,000 of them did not return to Finland, the majority travelled back, carrying multiple ruptures in their close relationships: first from their biological…

This article reflects on some influential theories, concepts and institutions that have shaped the nature and substance of international development since the mid-20th century. In particular, theories of modernisation and dependency are deployed to reflect on the ways in which the International Financial Institutions, such as, the World Bank and…

UNESCO's relatively high prestige across East Asia has spurred intensifying efforts by governments to use its imprimatur to legitimate official narratives of the past and visions of the future. This article focuses on China's use of UNESCO as an arena for competitive national 'branding' in the education field, especially relating to STEM and AI.…

The COVID pandemic created significant problems for higher education worldwide, including new and exacerbated challenges related to international higher education. In this article, the authors focus on: (1) the implications for onsite and online education; (2) international student mobility and internationalization at home; (3) the impact of…

Why have regimes and societies that would otherwise argue for their distinctiveness and sovereign decision-making caught 'ranking fever' in HE? Why are they willing to give up their sovereignty in the field of HE, and why do they accept the requirement of homogeneity to succeed in global university rankings? This paradox is explored in the case of…

This study aims to explore the educational foreign exchange and cooperation policy conceptual framework in China's education system from a historical policy retrospective analysis. Since reform and opening-up, China has issued a total of 151 pieces of educational foreign exchange and cooperation policy documents, including the cultural education…

This paper aims to broaden the conceptual approaches to understanding the complexity of student mobility in higher education (HE) across the Taiwan Strait, thereby exemplifying a contradictory mix of collaboration and competition that involves interplay among the various forces associated with global, regional and national settings. To achieve…

Each country should look beyond the nationalistic stories and the everyday self-images popularly disseminated. UK students deserve an environment where school curricula, public debate, politics, media and memorials give balanced, factual and ethically informed narratives about Britain's past and current dealings with other races and nations. A…

A growing literature highlights the benefits of playing the classic board game Diplomacy in international relations (IR) courses. But how exactly can it help students to learn not only about different IR theories, but also about what it means to "use" a theory in the first place? To address this question, I highlight my experiences…

This article reports on a pilot undergraduate subject that incorporated a range of technology-enhanced learning approaches including online lectures, an online site for in and out of class communications, and strong encouragement for students to blog and use Twitter. This paper evaluates student engagement through the social networking sites…

This research examines some modes of Japanization through education in Okinawa where Japanese influences on education have permeated after Japan's annexation. I investigate how a book excerpt entitled "Mizu no Tozai," included in high school textbooks in Okinawa, constructs Japanese identity. "Mizu no Tozai" functions as…

Recent research has focused either on the internationalisation of China's higher education (HE) as soft power, or on soft power with 'Chinese characteristics'. There is a paucity of research combining these two foci. This paper fills this gap by: (i) unravelling the meanings and features of the 'Chinese characteristics' embodied in the policies of…

The 1963 Peter Brook version of Sir William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" is a classic film that can be an instructive metaphor for International Studies and Political Science students to think about the concept of anarchy. This article explores a variety of International Relations theories by juxtaposing them with six separate themes…

This paper is a meditation on the idea of South-South dialogue, beginning with the "South-South Dialogues: Situated Perspectives in Decolonial Epistemologies" symposium held at the University of Queensland in 2015. I interrogate the concept of South-South dialogue, apposing it to the Cartesian 'I think', and then question the…