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Reclaiming EMI: A political-normative response to policy gaps in research and practice with international students
Led by Mustafa Akıncıoğlu
11 June 2025
13:00 – 14:00 BST (time zone converter)
Online via Zoom
Session abstract:
As English-medium instruction (EMI) becomes the default for global higher education, international students increasingly navigate institutional spaces shaped by unexamined EMI policies, uncritical notions of quality, and unprofessionalised academic practices. This talk draws on the EMI ProF (Professionalisation Framework), a political-normative model rooted in Freirean liberation approach to universities, to address these systemic deficiencies.
It argues that professionalising EMI—through coherent policy, ethical engagement, and quality assurance—is imperative for addressing the real experiences of international students. Drawing on recent critiques from the ‘Research with International Students’ scholarly community, this talk situates EMI universities as both sites of inequality and as spaces of potential transformation. The EMI ProF foregrounds the roles of both students and content-teachers as critical agents in this transformation, offering a normative framework for decolonising EMI, resisting research noise, and centring the politics of voice, agency, and justice.
Speaker bio: Dr. Mustafa Akıncıoğlu is an Associate Researcher at the University of Oxford, where he has been actively publishing in the field of English Medium Instruction (EMI) since 2014. He holds a PhD by Existing Published Work, specializing in EMI higher education policy, quality, and professionalisation. As the Founding Convenor of the BALEAP EMI Special Interest Group (EMI SIG), Dr. Mustafa has played a pivotal role in advancing research and dialogue in this field. He has contributed to numerous international educational development projects, successfully undertaking diverse roles. His research interests span EMI, higher education policy and quality, professionalisation of higher education, Critical EMI, Critical EAP, learner autonomy, and Critical Discourse Analysis.