Mobile Educational Spaces and Imaginative Student Experiences: The Case of Transnational Higher Education...

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Jingran Yu

Mobile Educational Spaces and Imaginative Student Experiences

The Case of Transnational Higher Education

Jingran Yu

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Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Routledge
30 September 2025

Moral & social purpose of education; Higher & further education, tertiary education

Series: Research into Higher Education

Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives from sociology, education, and human geography to investigate the space, community, and culture at an International Branch Campus, this fascinating book provides empirical evidence to understand the implications for students’ future socio-spatial mobilities.

Drawing on ethnographic data from a British International Branch Campus in China this book offers a timely discussion about transnational higher education. It illustrates the mobility of the educational space, where mobilities and materiality converge and are mediated by transnational imaginations. Students are portrayed as ‘imaginative travellers’, who may not have been physically abroad but are imaginatively mobilised by transnational material, social and cultural flows on campus. This book demonstrates how imaginative mobility cultivates students’ cosmopolitan orientations and competence, while acknowledging how structural constraints weave unevenness into the imaginative flows that arise and respond to the socio-spatial inequalities in global education landscapes. This study also offers empirical insights into China’s approach to transnational education that informs both research and policy.

This book is valuable reading for scholars, students, researchers and practitioners in higher education, particularly for those with an interest in educational studies, sociology, and human geography.

By: Jingran Yu
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9781032596709
ISBN 10: 1032596708
Series: Research into Higher Education
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 30 September 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

1. Introduction 2. A mobilities perspective on transnational education 3. Policy context 4. Space in Imagining 5. Community in Travelling 6. Cosmopolitans in the Making 7. Conclusion

Jingran Yu is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Education, Xiamen University, China and an Honorary Research Associate at the School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester, UK.

Reviews for Mobile Educational Spaces and Imaginative Student Experiences: The Case of Transnational Higher Education

'Jingran Yu’s Mobile Educational Spaces and Imaginative Student Experiences takes us inside the emergent spatiality of Sino-foreign universities, which are key intersections of educational and governance cultures with a transformative impact much larger than their size suggests. Lively reading, seriously insightful, highly recommended.' Simon Marginson, Professor of Higher Education, University of Oxford and Joint Editor in Chief of Higher Education. 'This is a fascinating account of a transnational higher education institution in China, based on detailed ethnographic research. It shows, in a compelling manner, how the students attending such an institution, while not physically internationally mobile, can be considered ‘imaginative travellers’, profoundly affected by the transnational flows that characterise their campus.' Rachel Brooks, Professor of Higher Education, University of Oxford and the President of British Sociological Association.