Thank you to everybody who joined us for the inaugural CIHE Conference in June 2023! Our next conference will be held in 2025. Please check back for updates in late 2024.

The Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) is delighted to announce the inaugural 2023 Biennial Conference on International Higher Education at Boston College on June 9-10, 2023.
Since 1995, CIHE has promoted the belief that an international perspective is needed to foster enlightened policies and practices in higher education. This biennial gathering of researchers in the field deepens that commitment by providing a new forum for rich dialogue in a collaborative, interdisciplinary, and intimate environment.
The field has grown since the center’s founding almost 30 years ago. The conference will celebrate this expansion, by convening both established thinkers and newer voices. We aim for all participants and partners to leave inspired, energized and engaged with others about work they might do together in the years to come.
Conference Dates
Questions?
What to Expect
This in-person academic conference is a space for researchers in the field of international higher education to come together, interact, and chart new directions for research. You can expect:
multiregional perspectives, engaging with complex issues in the field;
multigenerational connections among scholars researching similar issues;
lectures, provocations, dialogue and space for exchange and relationship-building among internationally diverse participants; and
warm hospitality, good food and drink, and rich conversations in a beautiful setting.
Welcome message from Gerardo Blanco, Academic Director of the Center for International Higher Education.
Format
This in-person conference will feature sessions that promote active engagement and interaction among participants. Session types will include invited plenary lectures, multiregional and multigenerational panel discussions, World Café-style dialogues, and interactive collaborative sessions where participants explore intersections and new directions across lines of work.
We aim to create a space that elevates participation of all of its members. In addition to the more formal program, there will be time to engage in informal conversations over meals and coffee and to network, meet new colleagues, and explore new collaborations around shared interests.
Program
| |
8:30 a.m. | ARRIVAL & REGISTRATION |
9:00 a.m. | WELCOME & INTRODUCTORY KEYNOTE |
10:15 a.m. | Coffee Break |
10:45 a.m. | PANEL & WORLD CAFÉ DISCUSSION Understanding, measuring and ensuring the quality of higher education |
12:30 p.m. | LUNCH & NETWORKING |
1:15 p.m. | PANEL & WORLD CAFÉ DISCUSSION Global trends and actors, local needs and policies: tensions and opportunities |
2:45 p.m. | Comfort Break |
3:00 p.m. | PANEL & WORLD CAFÉ DISCUSSION The (d)evolution of internationalization in/of higher education |
4:30 p.m. | Tea Break |
5:00 p.m. | KEYNOTE ADDRESS |
5:45 p.m. | WINE & CHEESE RECEPTION |
SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 2023 | |
8:30 a.m. | ARRIVAL |
9:00 a.m. | KEYNOTE ADDRESS |
9:45 a.m. | Comfort Break |
10:00 a.m. | PANEL & WORLD CAFÉ DISCUSSION Existential threats to higher education around the world |
11:30 a.m. | Coffee Break |
11:45 a.m. | CLOSING PANEL DISCUSSION Global trends and actors, local needs and policies: tensions and opportunities |
1:15 p.m. | LUNCH |
2:00 p.m. | Conference Ends
|
Keynote Speakers
Panelists

Isak Frumin, Head of the Observatory of Higher Education Innovations, Constructor University
Tang Heng, Assistant Professor, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University
Omolabake Fakunle, Chancellor's Fellow, University of Edinburgh
Manja Klemenčič, Associate Senior Lecturer, Harvard University
Marcelo Knobel, President, Insper
Janja Komljenovic, Senior Lecturer, Lancaster University
Patrício Langa, Professor of Sociology & Higher Education Studies, University of the Western Cape
Betty Leask, Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University
Sioux McKenna, Director of Graduate Studies, Rhodes University
Goolam Mohamedbhai, Former Vice-Chancellor, University of Mauritius
Hilligje van't Land, Secretary General, International Association of Universities
N V Varghese, Former Vice Chancellor, NIEPA
Rui Yang, Professor, University of Hong Kong
Maria Yudkevich, Professor, HSE University
Qiang Zha, Associate Professor, York University
Paper Submission
Registration for the 2023 Biennial Conference is now closed. We hope to see you at our next conference in 2025!
Accepted papers will not be formally presented at the conference.
All accepted papers will be published as a special issue in our open access series, CIHE Perspectives, after the event. Select papers may also be invited to be published in International Higher Education, the world’s oldest continuously published source of news and analysis of global higher education.
As this is an academic conference, aimed at researchers in international higher education, there is no option to register/attend without submitting a paper. Notifications will be sent by February 1, 2023.
Themes
- History and future of the field of international higher education
- Existential threats to higher education around the world
- Understanding, measuring and ensuring the quality of higher education
- The (d)evolution of internationalization in/of higher education
- Global trends and actors, local needs and policies: tensions and opportunities
Registration Fees
No registration fees will be collected. All accepted participants can attend the event, free of charge. Space is limited.
Please note that CIHE is convening a parallel event, the WES-CIHE Summer Institute (June 6-7, 2023), which is explicitly aimed at graduate students. Current graduate students are, therefore, encouraged to submit papers to the Summer Institute, rather than the Biennial Conference. Accepted participants in the Summer Institute will have the option of remaining in Boston to attend the Biennial Conference as general participants.
Venue
The CIHE 2023 Biennial Conference on International Higher Education will be on Boston College’s beautiful campus in Chestnut Hill, MA, just 20 minutes from Boston’s Logan Airport.
Accommodations
There are many hotel options near the Boston College campus in Chestnut Hill, MA. At many hotels close to campus, discounts are available if you mention that you are in town for an event at Boston College.
Our Commitment
Our commitment to you is that the conference will reflect the warmth and hospitality of the relationships we have developed over decades since our founding, inclusive of established thinkers and newer voices in the field from all regions of the world.
The conference will exemplify the center’s global reach, commitment to cutting-edge research and analysis, and international perspectives and reflect our commitment to:
Rigorous and ethical research and thoughtful, informed analysis
Conducting all of our activities in collaboration with others around the globe and to elevating local perspectives on all of the issues we analyze
Open access publication, translation into other languages and clear and accessible prose
Issues of social justice and, as such, we seek to acknowledge and—when possible—explicitly address global higher education inequalities through our work
Maintaining a strong focus on less-resourced and less-powerful global contexts and to promoting critical perspectives through our scholarship
- Supporting the development of the next generation of international higher education scholars
Video recordings of the conference keynotes and panel discussions will be posted online after the conference.