BKS Webinar: Universities Contributing to Societal Development: The Role of Institutional Autonomy and Academic Freedom
Wed 27 Oct
|Zoom Webinar
The British-Kazakh Society is hosting a webinar with Dr. Maia Chankseliani - Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at University of Oxford on the role of Institutional Autonomy and Academic Freedom.
Time & Location
27 Oct 2021, 10:00 – 11:00 BST
Zoom Webinar
About the event
Panel Discussion:
It has been recognised that higher education can support global, national, and local development, leading to the outcomes enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals and going beyond those outcomes. This talk will report on national manifestations of the developmental role of universities in post-Soviet countries, with a focus on Kazakhstan.
The talk will argue that limited academic freedom and institutional autonomy impede the full realisation of the potential of higher education. The assumptions underpinning academics’ views on how higher education can support development are discussed in the light of an innovative framework of essentialist and anti-essentialist approaches.
Juxtaposing the national with the global development missions of universities, the talk raises questions on the possibility of delinking higher education from the immediate human capital and modernisation needs of the nation-state and becoming concerned with the global; on promoting freedom to cultivate intellectual curiosity through education and research, and stimulating…