This paper engages with Hanson Thiem’s (2009) critique of geographies of education. Accepting the premise that education warrants fuller attention by geographers, the paper nonetheless argues that engaging with research on children, youth and families reshapes understanding of what has been, and might be, achieved. Foregrounding young people as the subjects rather than objects of education demands that attention be paid to their current and future life-worlds, in both inward and outward looking geographies of education. It also requires a broadening of our spatial lens, in terms of what ‘count’ as educational spaces, and the places where we study these.

Global geographies of higher education: the perspective of world university rankings his item ws sumitted to voughorough niversity9s snstitutionl epository y theGn uthorF Citation: t¤ oxD rF nd ryviD wFD PHIQF qlol geogrphies of higher edutionX the perspetive of world university rnkingsF qeoforumD RTD ppFRSE SWF Additional Information:• xysgiX this is the uthor9s version of work tht ws epted for puE lition in the journl qeoforumF ghnges resulting from the pulishing proessD suh s peer reviewD editingD orretionsD struturl formttingD nd other qulity ontrol mehnisms my not e refleted in this doE umentF ghnges my hve een mde to this work sine it ws sumitE ted for pulitionF e definitive version ws susequently pulished tX httpXGGdxFdoiForgGIHFIHITGjFgeoforumFPHIPFIPFHIR Abstract This paper contributes to emerging debates about uneven global geographies of higher education through a critical analysis of world university rankings. Drawing on recent work in geography, international higher education and bibliometrics, the paper examines two of the major international ranking schemes that have had significant public impact in the context of the on-going neoliberalization of higher education. We argue that the emergence of these global rankings reflects a scalar shift in the geopolitics and geoeconomics of higher education from the national to the global that prioritizes academic practices and discourses conducted in particular places and fields of research.Our analysis illustrates how the substantial variation in ranking criteria produces not only necessarily partial but also very specific global geographies of higher education. In comparison, these reveal a wider tension in the knowledge-based economy between established knowledge centres in Europe and the United States and emerging knowledge hubs in Asia Pacific. An analysis of individual ranking criteria, however, suggests that other measures and subject-specific perspectives would produce very different landscapes of higher education.

‘Brain circulation’ has become a buzzword for describing the increasingly networked character of highly skilled migration. In this article, the concept is linked to academics' work on circular mobility to explore the long‐term effects of their research stays in Germany during the second half of the twentieth century. Based on original survey data on more than 1800 former visiting academics from 93 countries, it is argued that this type of brain circulation launched a cumulative process of subsequent academic mobility and collaboration that contributed significantly to the reintegration of Germany into the international scientific community after the Second World War and enabled the country's rise to the most important source for international co‐authors of US scientists and engineers in the twenty‐first century. In this article I discuss regional and disciplinary specificities in the formation of transnational knowledge networks through circulating academics and suggest that the long‐term effects can be fruitfully conceptualized as accumulation processes in ‘centres of calculation’.

This paper examines to what extent the participation of researchers in transnational academic mobility, their experiences and perceived outcomes vary by gender. Based on longitudinal statistics, original survey data and semi-structured interviews with former visiting researchers in Germany, the paper shows that the academic world of female researchers tends to be less international than that of their male colleagues, particularly in the natural sciences. This situation has improved since the 1980s but significant variations remain by source country, subject, career stage and length of stay. The paper argues that the underlying reasons go far beyond direct gender relationships and suggests that conceptualising transnational academic mobility as mobilization processes in Latourian 'centres of calculation' underlines the need for making this experience accessible to the widest possible range of researchers.

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