Global common good in higher education in a nation-state world: a spatial theorisation

In the field of higher education, the evolving trajectories of persons, groups, institutions, nations and pan-national organisations intersect in multiple space-making projects. Space making, shaped by human and organisational agents, takes place at the intersection of (1) materiality, (2) imagining and discourse, and (3) novel social practices. One of these spatial projects, in which all higher education is deeply implicated, is nation-building. Another project, less established, is the formation of global common good in and through higher education. Global common good is an ethical relation of mutual growth, well-being and sustainability at world level, embracing human society and nature. It is essentially plural and reciprocal. Relations and potentials of global common good are subject to disruption, notably in research collaboration and academic mobility. However, rather than lamenting geopolitics, that paper looks for ways forward. It theorises pathways to the global common good in higher education, most of which require the constructive support of the nation-state, focusing on six modalities of space making: ontology, research, education, mobility, solidarity and regulation. It maps compatibilities and tensions between nation-building and the global common good and develops strategies for advancing both national/global synergies and one-world agendas.