Navigating Polycrisis through Research with International Students

Online conference
23 – 27 March 2026

Conference theme

Global higher education is in polycrisis in many contexts (Stein, 2025). By polycrisis, we refer to interrelations of multiple destabilizing forces which intersect across social, economic, political, ecological, and personal realms, threatening potential unrest and disruption to existing structures of international higher education. This presents itself through numerous ways, including (but not limited to) multiple intersecting crises affecting: 

  • funding and financing of higher education, creating global variations in how international students’ fees are positioned as ‘solutions’ (Weber et al., 2023);
  • anti-migration political rhetorics which increasingly lead public discourse and policy (Völker & Gonzatti, 2024), further politicizing the migration-higher education nexus (Cerna & Chou, 2023);
  • geopolitical tensions and conflicts between countries, altering and affecting student mobilities (Glass & Minaeva, 2025);
  • climate change and instability, impacting the sustainability of educational mobilities and their impact on the planet (Shields, 2019);
  • crackdowns on students’ freedom of speech, particularly in relation to the ongoing genocide and scholasticide in Gaza (Ibrahim & Heleta, 2025);
  • epistemologies, particularly through the growing prevalence of generative AI and other technologies, where reality itself appears harder to access and facts become debatable. 

Research with international students needs to shift towards navigating and reckoning with polycrisis to avoid obsolescence or risk (further) marginalizing our field as an excessively niche and unimpactful area of scholarship. This conference argues for a turn towards recognizing how our research intersects with wider societies, both contributing to and affecting global and national politics. Without succumbing to despair, we offer this theme as a space to encourage conversations on polycrisis through the following questions:

  • How do we define and label polycrisis in research with international students?
  • What underpinning and foundational societal issues are of pressing concern for research with international students?
  • In what ways might research with international students currently be ignoring or avoiding societal issues of pressing concern?  
  • How might research with international students contribute to navigating polycrisis? 
  • How can research with international students address the ongoing politicization of our field in society? 

Altogether, we aim to critically question the purpose of our field and how it intersects with the many problems facing our global society. We hope to reflect on how we can uplift one another and be in community while recognizing the significant and rising global challenges being faced.

Conference format and schedule

This conference will take place on Microsoft Teams during the week of 23 March. This year, we centre the conference schedule on panels with multiple speakers which focus on topics of importance to the field for discussion, rather than individual paper presentations. Panels will last for 90 minutes, featuring 60 minutes of presentations from 3-4 speakers and 30 minutes of questions and discussion. 

We are mindful of international time zones and preliminarily aim for the following schedule:

We will record sessions where speakers give permission, which can be reviewed on our website later for those unable to join live. 

The full conference schedule will be made available in late January. 

Call for papers and submissions

This conference will feature panels of 3-4 speakers on thematic topics rather than individual paper sessions. Submissions are due by 1 December 2025.

Make submission here

Submissions to contribute to the conference can be made through two routes:

1) Full panel proposal submission 

We invite submissions from a team of scholars that center on a specific topic related to conference theme of ‘navigating polycrisis’. Full panels should cover 90 minutes in total, with no more than 60 minutes for presentations and at least 30 minutes for discussion and questions. We encourage creativity of panel formats and approaches within this timeframe. 

Full panel submissions should identify one person as a panel lead. Given the time limitations, you will likely want to limit the submission to no more than four total speakers. 

We expect that full panel submissions will:

  • Be centered around a single topic or idea which is related to or addresses the conference theme of ‘navigating polycrisis’. 
  • Focus on provoking discussion, challenging assumptions, and debating issues around its chosen topic, rather than simply presenting findings of individual studies 
  • Synthesize the perspectives of multiple speakers who provide varied perspectives, rather than all deriving from a single study or project 
  • Outline potential pathways forward for future research agendas

Submissions for full panels should include a brief abstract of the panel as a whole (approx. 300 words), as well as short abstracts for each featured speaker’s contributions (approx. 200 words each).

If you have an idea for a panel, but are unsure who else to invite, you can contact us (RISnetwork@manchester.ac.uk) and we will share your panel via our newsletter and social media. 

2) Individual presentation submission to a nominated panel theme 

We put forward six panel topics, to which we welcome individual submissions. Each panel will feature approximately four presenters, each speaking for no more than 15 minutes. These panels are led by an identified panel leader, as indicated below. If your submission is selected for the panel, you will be expected to engage with the full panel to plan the session before the conference (e.g., between January – March 2026). 

Submissions for nominated panel themes should include a brief abstract (approx. 300 words) about their proposed contribution and how it connects to the panel’s theme. 

The nominated panels include:

  • Politicizations of international students in host societies (led by Arif Abu). This panel focuses on the ways that the presence of international students is becoming increasingly politicized in many common host countries, particularly through visa restrictions, media or political discourses, and public backlash.
  • Sustainability and international student mobility (led by Anne Campbell)
    This panel considers the sustainability of large-scale student mobility and its impacts on the environment, such as via the emission productions of international travel, local impacts on land and transportation, or environmental implications of technologies (including AI).
  • International student activism and freedom of speech (led by Shanshan Jiang-Brittan). This panel centres international students as activists, alongside their contributions to civil society, protest, and political or social activism. Freedom of speech is considered alongside this, particularly where precarious visa status or geopolitics may limit political activism or silence dissent. 
  • Materialities and material injustices (led by Vera Spangler). This panel examines how inequalities shape the material realities for different groups of international students. Through physical bodies, spaces, and material assemblages (technologies, personal items, everyday objects, furniture, etc.), global higher education is mediated and uneven outcomes are created. These material dimensions are often sidelined or overlooked in common explorations of international students’ learning or identities. 
  • Economic and infrastructural pressures encountered by international students (led by Ryan Allen). This panel considers the impacts of economic crises (such as inflation and unequal currency exchanges) on international students, including their abilities to identify and secure safe and affordable housing, food, and other necessities for living. 
  • Epistemic and knowledge production crises (led by Ramzi Merabet). This panel considers the active positioning of international students in epistemic production, including their engagement within colonial knowledge hierarchies. This is set against a backdrop of challenging ‘post-truth’ environments where information is mediated through multiple social media spaces and often subject to multiple propaganda efforts or politicizations. It considers how international students can recognise and contribute to what is true, what is a fact, and engage with epistemic uncertainty in their lives and studies.

Timeline

1 December 2025: Submissions due 
15 January 2026: Confirmations of review outcome due to applicants
Late January 2026: Full conference schedule available

Registering to Attend

Attending the RIS Online Conference 2026 is free to attend. Registration will be required, which will be made available in December on this page.

Questions

Please direct any questions to: RISnetwork@manchester.ac.uk