ABSTRACT
One area of change in the professional context for academics is the impact of institutional strategies to keep afloat in the supposed rising tide of globalization. These strategies can include a wide range of bi-lateral and multi-lateral international relationships between institutions and the expected involvement of departments, schools and individual academics in supporting teaching, research and networking activities. A variety of social work cross-national activities has developed, particularly those funded by the European Union. Unplanned and unfocused activity developed as a result of grant aid has sometimes been transitory. Attempts to maintain long-term relationships require a mutuality in commitment over a period of time to develop more complex and equal relationships (Askeland and Payne, 2001a). Consequently, more complex relationships, including research and staff mobility alongside student mobility, may gain greater support in universities. Certainly, issues of the validity of cross-national knowledge in social work are usefully raised by crossnational connections (Askeland and Payne, 2001b) and cross-national analysis (Payne, 2001). Social work courses in American universities have developed links internationally as a result of the curriculum requirements, and information about some of these is contained in Healy et al. (2003).
