ABSTRACT
The internationalisation of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Europe and around the globe, broadly covering inter-institutional cooperation, student and staff mobility, transnational research and education initiatives, has long been the focus of policymaking on institutional, national and trans-national levels. In the context of European studies, especially within research on Europeanisation, internationalisation efforts in the area of education are believed to have led to the most tangible effects of Europeanisation, notably among university students (Trondal, 2002; Corbett & Henkel, 2013). In this context, the emergence of the European Universities Initiative (EUI) constitutes a key development, explicitly bringing together efforts of internationalisation and of Europeanisation. This introductory chapter proposes to capture this double movement in the novel concept of Euro-internationalisation: when internationalisation is used to serve Europeanisation, through calls launched by European-level funding bodies for higher education, and embraced by HEIs across Europe. It further outlines the EUI as an object of scientific study from a variety of disciplinary, conceptual and methodological perspectives and introduces the various contributions to the collective volume, structured in two parts: the first dealing with Euro-internationalisation in practice and the second developing original perspectives on the EUI as an object of study.
