A PhD In motion: Advancing a critical academic mobilities approach (CAMA) to researching short-term mobility schemes for doctoral students

ABSTRACT

Short-term mobility has been neglected in the higher education mobilities literature, which tends to focus on longer stays such as study abroad or entire degrees. Short-term doctoral mobility schemes are relatively low-cost, potentially high-value investments in the development of early career researchers. Doctoral mobilities research – and the field of academic mobilities research more broadly – is characterised by a positivist, often atheoretical orientation; this article responds to this by introducing a critical academic mobilities approach (CAMA). This approach is rooted in the ‘mobilities paradigm’, and involves (i) questioning the status of mobility as a universal good; (ii) exploring the subjectivity of mobile subjects as dynamic and shifting, but also structurally determined; (iii) a commitment to researching mobility processes as well as investments and outcomes. The article explores ‘autoethno-case studies’ of two doctoral mobility schemes funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC): Overseas Institutional Visits (OIV) and the PhD Partnering Scheme (PPS).

KEYWORDS:

• Doctoral mobility
• critical academic mobilities approach
• PhD study
• academic mobility funding
• mobilities paradigm

Acknowledgements

With thanks to the hosts who supported my participation in both schemes, particularly to Melanie Walker for supporting my ongoing association with the Higher Education and Human Development Programme at UFS, and to my doctoral supervisors Elaine Unterhalter and Jenny Parkes. Thanks also to James Burford and Holly Henderson for comments on draft versions of this article, and to Elaine Unterhalter for encouraging me to push the theoretical angle of the paper further.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Emily F. Henderson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5723-9560

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council: [Grant Number PhD Studentship; OIV funding; PhD Partnership Scheme].