This paper turns our attention to a rather neglected dimension of (de)colonization, namely, the affective elements of (de)colonization in the context of higher education. "Affective decolonization" highlights that decolonization has to also happen at the level of affective life. The notion of affective decolonization complements the work…

This piece offers a conceptual framework for collective care as pedagogy in higher education, and a proposition of how to theorize its orientations within anticolonial and feminist work on affect in education. First, I spotlight work that helps to define collective care. Next, I call on the concept of affective individualism as a way to describe…

This article explores affective alignment and epistemic polarization in the field of feminist research, resulting from the neoliberalization of the universities and a performance-oriented research economy. Previous research has described and analysed the 'epistemic splitting' that feminist scholars engage in to live up to standardized performance…

Drawing from the tensions within non-representational and human practice perspectives on affect, this paper continues the task of re-conceptualising academic-hlevel resistance in the context of UK higher education. Such re-conceptualisation is underpinned by the belief that illustrating the breadth of resistant possibility within and between…

Conversations about academic freedom are never just about protecting the intellectual rigour of academic knowledge as an abstract object; they are also about the relational rigour of how, by whom, and to what ends that knowledge is produced, transmitted, circulated, and ultimately impacts both humans and other-than-human beings (Stein, in Lobo et…

The COVID-19 crisis made spaces for people to immerse themselves in moments of reflection. The suspension of time, sites, and body mobility, the collapse of the past principles; as the macro learning environment has undergone unprecedented changes, how could people read and react to those changes? Learning at the university, almost all the…

The growth of the Chinese language in African countries and African students' consequent flocking into Chinese higher education are both emergent phenomena. This partly explains the lack of empirical research on this body of student migrants and their Chinese language learning. This paper applies Watkins' theorisation on pedagogic affect to…

We offer the concept of "proximate ambivalence" to highlight the ambiguity inherent in the social and spatial relations of higher education's digitally-mediated teaching and learning that replaced in-person seminars during the COVID-19 pandemic. By proximate ambivalence, we refer to one's simultaneous proximity and distance in relation…

Global university rankings (GURs) have garnered increasing media attention since their inception. Yet to date, a concerted attempt to offer an affect lens -- emotions, responses, reactions and feelings that are relational and transpersonal -- underlying the mediatisation of GURs remains absent. Drawing on affect theories, we analysed the Indian…

In this paper we reflect on our experiences teaching human geography across two modules that pedagogically centre student reflexivity through content that has potential to be dis-comforting. Drawing upon student experiences on two final year option modules, relating to social and spatial exclusion and "race", ethnicity and multiculture,…

This article explores the role of affect in addressing the advantage conventionally accorded to high socio-economic status (SES) in higher education (HE) and how this advantage plays out for students from low SES backgrounds. Positioned as the 'other' to an assumed norm, the capacities of these students can be considered the 'wrong' capacities,…

This study supplements the existing conceptualisation of skills mismatch based on cognitive evaluations (being underskilled or overskilled) with an affective aspect that captures how workers cope with skills (mis)match situations (feeling overchallenged or underchallenged) and an analysis of skills mismatch situations' influence on job…

The neoliberal university which we inhabit is usually discussed in terms of policies, regulations and governing practices. Yet, academic life is steeped in affect. To illustrate that our political positions are imbued with and arise from affective positions, I present three stories of academics from public universities in Sri Lanka. These stories…

This article contributes to conversations on hospitality in educational settings, with a focus on higher education and the online context. We integrate Derrida's ethics of hospitality framework with a focus on practices of hospitality, including its affective and material, embodied dimension (Zembylas: Stud Philos Educ 39:37-50, 2019). This…

This study is focused on the analysis of online intercultural competence from a gender perspective. It uses online communications and student self-perceptions to explore similarities and differences. Videoconferencing was used as a tool for communication in higher education. A quantitative and qualitative methodologies were applied, including…