Knowledge Production in Higher Education: Between Europe and the Middle East

(Hardback)

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Mindful of divisive labels in constructions of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and of Europe, the editors and contributors of Knowledge production in higher education reflexively immerse themselves into an investigation of how knowledge about these regions is produced at higher educational establishments.

Thus, zooming in on mutual scholarship about Europe and/or the MENA opens up a wide range of possibilities for supplanting visions of so-called traditional Orientalists, to abandon the sets of magnifying glasses through which the Other is studied. For those interested in the decolonisation of academia and issues of positionality this is a must read.

Reviews

This book addresses one of the key questions of our time how research on the MENA and Europe has been influenced by the differing perspectives of educational traditions in a range of countries. The scholars brought together here elucidate the importance of not only bringing but also understanding diverse perspectives that emanate from the systems of training in Europe and the MENA, making clear that this impacts both the questions we ask and the hypotheses we consider. A must-read for scholars as they reflect on their own positionality and those of others in the field.
Michael Robbins, Project Director, Arab Barometer

In this insightful volume, the editors and their co-authors critically highlight what readers already think they know about Orient-al or Occident-al knowledge production in higher education. The result offers intelligent interventions that point out what students and sometimes also faculty do not actually know about knowledge reproduction of the other. This is a timely thought-provoking treatise!
Larbi Sadiki, Professor of Arab democratization, University of Qatar

While a growing literature focuses on knowledge production and higher education in and on the Middle East, this timely volume is unique for considering the Middle East and Europe together. It explores the deeply political and expressly dialogic relationships that have produced fields, paradigms and perspectives, while eschewing unilinear genealogies and histories and focusing not only on epistemologies but crucially also on pedagogies.
Seteney Shami, Founding Director, Arab Council for the Social Sciences

Author Bio

Michelle Pace is Professor in Global Studies at Roskilde University

Jan Claudius Vlkel is Senior Researcher at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute, Freiburg