ABSTRACT
Queer theory has not previously been applied to higher education policy domains. The Introduction explores the intellectual beginnings of the book for the two authors, and how the starting point was political and affective non-attunement with the binary thinking that is so often embedded in policy interventions for social justice and inclusion, such as affirmative action or women in leadership. Drawing on decades of equity research in East and South Asia, Europe, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa conducted by the Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER) at the University of Sussex, alongside new material from one of the authors’ research projects, while working at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile, and the University of Glasgow, UK, the book probes how norms travel and are reinforced through discourses, experiences, and practices across global higher education. These are contextualised in relation to the political economy of neoliberalism and what has been queered, revealed, disrupted, and reinforced via the global pandemic. The authors invoke queer theory, not because it provides another set of certainties to grid onto the policy turbulence of higher education, but because it dismantles the seemingly untouchable linear certainty itself. The book aims to move beyond identitarian concerns of sexualities and gender problematisations and to unfold queer epistemologies towards interactions with wider contemporary and emergent global issues in higher education. The Introduction also offers an overview of the chapters and why these topics were selected.
