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This article draws on data from six European countries (Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Spain) to explore the higher education timescapes inhabited by students. Despite arguments that degree-level study has become increasingly similar across Europe – because of global pressures and also specific initiatives such as the Bologna Process and the creation of a European Higher Education Area – it shows how such timescapes differed in important ways, largely by nation. These differences are then explained in terms of: the distinctive traditions of higher education still evident across the continent; the particular mechanisms through which degrees are funded; and the nature of recent national-level policy activity. The analysis thus speaks to debates about Europeanisation, as well as how we theorise the relationship between time and place.

This special issue explores some of the methodological challenges that are brought into play when scholars deploy creative methods to research across difference. Within the research methods literature, the term 'creative methods' is typically used to refer to an approach that enables people to express themselves in non-verbal ways (Gauntlett, 2007), often used in combination with more traditional methods such as interviews and focus groups. Mannay (2016) (drawing on Pauwels, 2011) suggests that creative methods can be categorised under one of three approaches. First, researchers can focus on a variety of 'found' materials. While this has been a well-established approach within the disciplines of history, art and archaeology, it is also now frequently used in the social sciences. Here, emphasis is placed on the importance of analysis and interpretation, rather than creation and production. Examples include the analysis of the visual content of: school websites and marketing materials (e.g. Wilkins, 2012); posters promoting sexual health (e.g. Jewitt, 1997); and fanzines produced by young women (e.g. Harris, 2004). Second, projects may be built around 'researcher-initiated productions' (Mannay, 2016), in which researchers are positioned as image-creatorsfor example, taking photographs of tattoos (Jacobson and Luzatto, 2004); sketching the layout of shared housing (Heath and Cleaver, 2004); and filming classroom interactions (Baines et al., 2009). Third, participants may be involved in more participatory ways, where the researcher acts as facilitator. Such approaches have included: documentary-making with young people (e.g. Blum-Ross, 2013); running photography workshops with refugees (e.g. Finney and

This article examines how higher education (HE) students are conceptualised in Spain, drawing on an analysis of policy and institutional narratives about such students, as well as on the perspectives of university staff and students themselves. More specifically, it will explore an interesting paradox that we encountered in our data: on one hand, marketisation is less firmly established in the HE system of Spain than in many other European countries, and policy and institutional narratives in Spain present the HE system as being relatively unmarketised. On the other hand, the staff and students we interviewed presented the Spanish HE system and the student experience as having been dramatically transformed by marketisation. In analysing this paradox, the article highlights the importance of not viewing countries as coherent educational entities. In addition – while broadly supporting scholarship that has pointed to a growing market orientation of national HE systems across Europe – the article draws attention to how the manner in which the marketisation of HE is experienced on the ground can be very different in different national contexts, and may be mediated by a number of factors, including perceptions about the quality of educational provision and the labour market rewards of a degree; the manner in which the private cost of education (if any) is borne by students and their families; and the extent to which marketisation may have become entrenched and normalised in the HE system of a country.

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