Transnationally-trained scholars working in global contexts: Knowledge production,identity,epistemology,and career trajectories

Introduction

With the increasing internationalization of higher education (HE) globally over the past two decades, there are now more scholars with some form of transnational mobility and experience than ever before (see, for example, Bauder et al., 2018; Chen, 2017; Jenkins, 2019; Jöns, 2018; Kim SK, 2016; Kim T, 2017, 2020; Kim and Locke, 2010; Koh and Sin, 2020; Kuzhabekova et al., 2019; Ortiga et al., 2018; Xu and Montgomery, 2018). From graduate students who obtain a PhD in a foreign country and then return to their home society to work, to professors who take up positions in a country other than the one(s) where they were raised and/or studied, the staff at ever more universities across the globe comprise ever more individuals with various forms of transnational experiences. Such a development has obvious ramifications for everything from research to pedagogy, to career satisfaction. However, given the newness of the scale of this phenomenon, there is still so much about the reality of transnationally-trained scholars working in global contexts that we do not know about, or that we (erroneously) assume must be the case. This Special Issue (SI) is therefore an attempt to learn more about this phenomenon with an emphasis on autoethnographic and in-depth qualitative and ethnographic data, to explore the lives and experiences of a group of transnationally-trained scholars working in global contexts, and to learn about how their transnational experiences intersect with and influence their knowledge production, identity, pedagogy, epistemology, and career trajectories.

At its broadest level, this SI builds on the traditions of postcolonial and decolonial critiques of knowledge (Bhambra, 2014; Brennan, 2004, 2012; Loomba et al., 2005; Mignolo, 2013; Takayama et al., 2017) and the works of Heryanto (2002), Chen (2010) and Phan (2017) that argue for the need to question the geopolitics of local knowledge and ideology, to examine the varied forms and complexity of a wide range of “global” and “local” knowledge, thoughts, ideologies and practices that transnational scholars assume, encounter, operate from within, and negotiate their positionalities with. It identifies and discusses the opportunities and challenges presented to transnationally-trained scholars’ re(engagement) with their varied localities across Asia, Europe, the Americas, Oceania, and the Gulf region. It demonstrates how the intersecting politics and hegemony of certain and specific global/Western and local forms of knowledge, thoughts and ideologies can embed and shape transnational scholars’ scholarship, research practices, pedagogies, classroom dynamics, identity and career trajectories. It also investigates how such scholars respond to nuanced understandings of, and competing discourses underlying, varied bodies of mainstream global/Western/local knowledge.

At a more specific level, however, this SI moves beyond the usual business of critiquing and de-colonizing “the West”, as it pays careful attention to the dynamic realities of the changing global HE scenes, as well as of multiple specific workplace contexts. Such scenes and contexts are always inherently hierarchical and organically transforming. They are at the same time shaped by particular logics of power relations and agency politics, which are as uniquely place-grounded and specific as universally interactive and border-crossing. As such, “the West” and what comes with it should not and must not remain the sole and dominant target of scholarly critiques (Luke, 2010, 2019; Phan, 2017). Further, by highlighting the transnationality and mobility aspects of knowledge production (Fenwick and Farrell, 2011; Jöns et al., 2017; Phan, 2011, 2017, 2019; Rizvi and Lingard, 2010) and those who actively produce knowledge in transnational space, this SI unpacks, addresses and advances theoretical, methodological, empirical, and conceptual issues embedded in and arising from the work of each individual scholar contributing to this collection. It recognizes and locates knowledge and knowledge production in transnational space, showing the fluidity and the interactivity of multiple bodies of knowledge that are, in many cases, problematic if labeled in dichotomous terms and superficially compared.

At the same time, this SI highlights the grounded-ness of knowledge production in the local conditions in which each of the contributors is immersed. Each paper contextualizes the politics of local knowledge specific to its own focus and brings to the fore multiple voices and insights from within, such as those from Western-trained English language teachers working in Saudi Arabia (Alshakhi and Phan), from White male academics moving South from the conventional “Center” (Kelley; Windle), from transnationally-trained returnees to their native homelands (Alshakhi and Phan; Karakas; Nonaka; Phan and Mohamad; and Phung), and from scholars transitioning across varied secular educational systems and more religion-informed settings (Alshakhi and Phan; Phan and Mohamad). These voices are their own voices and the voices of their research participants, who are also subject to transnationality and mobility of knowledge, ideas, and knowledge production in their own training and everyday work in HE. Through their research studies, the contributing authors investigate their participants’ multi-layered negotiations and struggles with conflicting narratives underlying the dominance of certain local knowledge and ideology. Likewise, through their autoethnographic data, these authors examine their own scholarship, epistemologies, and positionalities as well as their evolving/revised intellectual growth and approaches to research, teaching, and learning.

The contributing authors are transnational scholars who have received at least one degree from Western universities in Europe, North America, and Oceania. They currently hold positions in universities in the “Global South” and are often referred to as Western-trained academics. While there are many issues that these authors addressed, some overarching themes that emerge across the articles revolve around issues of home, transnationality, and mobility.

Grounded-ness in mobility and the multiplicity of “home”, “foreign”, and “local” “home”

“I FEEL it is wrong to go on writing books and plays about American subjects using ideas and methods that we get abroad,” Thomas Wolfe announced. As his country’s self-appointed bard, he planned to compose a vast saga, using a distinctly American idiom and employing a uniquely American structure, that would capture “the whole intolerable memory of America, its violence, savagery, immensity, beauty, ugliness, and glory.” (David Herbert Donald, 1983, New York Times ¹ )

Perhaps it is universal that home often means a place where one feels one belongs and can connect with, draw on, relate to, and one is inclined to glorify, honor, and defend. In this sense, home is associated with certain constructed meanings and structures, shared histories and ideologies, widely promoted symbolic and physical landscapes, and spiritual suffering and endurance. All these come with a strong sense of home as holding and embracing lasting geographic and metaphysical materials that one values and wants to show one’s own people and the world.

At the same time, in his autobiographic novel You Can’t Go Home Again (1940/2011) published after his death, American author Thomas Wolfe gracefully and painfully captured a permanent truth that home is never the same once you’ve left, and you can never return to the home you brought with you in your recollections and association. Neither is home what it was or what you remember it and imagine it to be in the past and in the present. Like home, you as a social being are never the same over time.

While this SI corresponds philosophically and epistemologically to the above perspective, it also offers extra nuances informed by multi-directional encounters that transnationally-trained scholars accumulate and reflect upon. The meanings associated with “home”, “foreign”, and “local” are multiple and generative. On the one hand, this collection shows in what ways “home” and “local” are contested and constructed concepts and are not always connected to one’s homeland, native country, or country of birth; and that the “foreign” can become a certain “home” such as an intellectual home, a scholarly and academic home, and a home to escape from one’s native home (see, for example, Karakas; Phan and Mohamad; and Phung).

The intermixing of “home”, “foreign” and “transnational” is complexly examined and discussed throughout these articles. At the same time, this SI engages with “home”, “foreign” and “local” as specific places with their particular power relations, politics, and relationships with others (all the articles in this collection). As such, to bring out the multi-layered nuances of transnational academic mobilities and experiences and to move beyond repeating grand narratives on this area of studies, we maintain that the specificity and particularity of “local”, “foreign” and “home” must be contextualized and discussed and presented with substance. Locality, place, and grounded-ness are never less important than transnationality, mobility, and globalization, as Phan has argued in her scholarship (Phan, 2008, 2011, 2017, 2019) and as shown in all the articles in this SI. Treating “home”, “foreign” and “local” in complex terms promises to advance scholarship on academic transnationality and knowledge production in this increasing transnational and mobile world of global HE.

Multiple manifestations of transnationality

Another significant contribution made by the SI is its identification and interrogation of the complex and multiple facets of transnationality in HE. All the included articles illustrate a range of specific ways by which transnationality manifests simultaneously in multiple facets: as an analytic concept; a state of mind or being; an experience; a process; an imagined space; a diasporic haven; a virtual interface; a manifestation of emotion(al) labor; a repurpose of an idea and discourse; a dialectical relation; a positionality; an identification; a set of relations; an evolving relationship; and a constant recollection and reflection. It may also be a self-ascribed or an imposed label or sense of identity. By being mindful of the ontological difference between transnationality as a lived experience and as an analytic construct, this SI opens up new grounds for theorizing transnationality and knowledge production. It does so by also foregrounding the role of scholars as power-player, power-consumer, and power-(re)producer as well as the unevenness, fluidity and grounded-ness of power relations that inform knowledge production, in general, and academic transnationality, in particular. All in all, it makes it clear that transnationality and transnationalism do not and should not entertain the assumption that all transnationally-trained-and-exposed academics can be lumped together under dominant narratives of transnational experience told repeatedly in existing scholarship.

Mobility: Private, public, government-funded, institutionally-driven, self-initiated

Interestingly, the transnational mobilities and imaginaries, as shared and discussed in this collection, do not always start with an act of cross-country travel in the first place, but could begin with their fascination of a foreign being and/or foreign society, their fantasies about a place different from their own, or their exposures to popular culture and certain academic texts that subconsciously form their transnational lenses. In many ways, transnational mobilities can be as accidental and spontaneous as planned and strategically prepared. In the same vein, transnational mobilities can be as pragmatic and financially driven as intellectually informed and desired for.

Mobility can be a private act and a personal pursuit as much as it is a public investment in the forms of policy and institutional aspirations for the training and recruitment of talents. As such, transnationally-trained scholars often find themselves caught in and subject to the brain gain/brain drain/brain circulation debates and narratives among different actors including governments, international organizations, institutions, academics, and tax payers. Of course, these scholars do not necessarily experience once-and-for-all transnational academic grand narratives of transnationalism, as we have argued earlier.

Critical reflection, life story, autoethnography and empirical research

Through a combination of autoethnographic and empirical data, the authors in this SI examine their own scholarship, pedagogies, epistemologies, and positionalities as well as their evolving/revised intellectual growth and approaches to research, teaching, and learning. Critical reflection and life stories are vividly interwoven in all the articles. We do not want to take away your curiosity about how each of the individual articles showcases the artistry of blending autoethnography, ethnography, and other data components, so we will say no more.

On another note, the focus of this SI and its methodological richness and nuances as well as the specific accounts and questions examined in each article have ignited unexpected reflections on the part of some reviewers invited to referee the submissions. Such reflections have continued beyond the reviewing process, and are thoughtful demonstrations of knowledge production and scholarship building. It has dawned on us that the kind of conversation between and among (guest) editors, authors, and reviewers during the reviewing process is knowledge circulation and exchanges in a space that is interactive, stimulating, reflexive, engaging, and generative, yet at times painful.

Allan Luke, Emeritus Professor, Queensland University of Technology, a transnationally-trained scholar working in Asia, Australia, and North America, is one of the external reviewers. Allan has given us consent to include in this Editorial two accounts stemming from his own experiences and scholarship on identity, critical literacy, narrative, autoethnography, and the internationalization of HE.

Account 1

Back to that article, as a narrative it’s packed with contradictions and unresolved issues . . . . I like the open-ended-ness of Khalid’s dilemma and life (Khalid was the pseudonym of one of the contributing authors during review). I’m finding that identity is like an empty set, it’s a point of aspiration and striving, an immanent term. . .. And I like that it didn’t become focal in that piece. (Allan Luke, email exchange, 18 February 2020)

Account 2

In my work in Singapore and China, I’ve tried to extrapolate from my experience with Aboriginal Australia which had many, many hard lessons about the limits of my own “minoritization” and how this changed as I shifted to a position of power, when you’ve moved from margin to center of another margin, the optics and speaking position change.

As you’ll see from my own autoethnographic stuff in the narrative volume (Luke, 2019)—it requires a fair amount of work to ensure the kind of honesty and self-understanding comes across without it slipping into scholarly narcissism (Allan Luke, email exchange, 19 February 2020).

The accounts presented above from Allan Luke point to the importance of ethics and conduct of care, respect and humility, in academia and scholarship production, which we elaborate a little more below.

Ethics and conduct of care

A recurring theme and an important contribution of this SI is its engagement with the ethics of writing on transnational academic mobilities, regardless of whether one employs autoethnography, life stories, personal narratives or empirically collected data. Such ethics lies in the authors’ honest and critical conversations with and reflections on troubling, troubled, ambiguous, awkward, inspiring, and painful experiences and encounters occurring in their journeys. These conversations and reflections ought not to glorify, romanticize, victimize, sensationalize, fixate, and perpetuate dominant power relations and ontology in academia, as well as in our self-portrayal as knowers. We see more clearly the importance of deconstructing the importance of constructing an identity, in this case a transnational identity. Echoing Luke (2019, 2020), we call for more attention to ethics and conduct of care as well as a fine balance of self-reflexivity and humility, as we are working with autoethnography and ethnography in our construction of knowledge. We have constantly been humbled by the sincerity, honesty, and labor-intensive crafting of autoethnographic and ethnographic narratives, and data building in all the articles.