The Geopolitics of Expert Knowledge: Analysing the European Commission’s Role and Influence in Indonesian Higher Education

Abstract Building on a rich set of policy documents and interview data, and using the concept of the epistemic infrastructure, the article focuses on an analysis of how European HE expert actors became the preferred advisers for Indonesia’s HE quality assurance system. As the article shows, working towards the quality assurance of higher education institutions in Indonesia serves not only for the apparent purpose of offering technocratic and rational solutions to improving HE governance and delivery, but also for the parallel aim of expanding the role and influence of European higher education in other world regions and zones of influence. Given the role and identity of the EU as a political project, as well as the specific mission that has been assigned to European universities as custodians and carriers of European liberal values, the work of European experts in Indonesia has geopolitical value and significance; it thus allows us to examine the geopolitics of expert knowledge production as a new and complex space of interactions, possibilities and contradictions that calls for a nuanced and careful analytical approach.