In her doctoral dissertation, Vesna Holubek explored transnational educational cooperation between a Finnish university and universities in Palestine, Brazil, and Thailand. Prompted by the education export developments in Finland’s higher education, the research unpacks the questions of the exportability and transferability of educational ideas across country borders. While transnational education has often been discussed as an unproblematic one-way transfer of education from the provider to the receiver, this research reveals more complex cultural and pedagogical dynamics emerging in this type of international cooperation. To describe these dynamics, Holubek uses the concepts of diversification and hybridisation of pedagogical ideas. In light of these dynamics, the dissertation proposes a broader cultural approach to researching and practicing transnational education. The proposed approach takes into account the complex intermixing of different pedagogical ideas and contextual aspects surrounding transnational educational cooperations.
The dissertation is available online at https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-4489-4
Holubek’s lectio praecursoria has been published open access:
Holubek, V. (2026). Cultural and pedagogical processes in transnational higher education. Tiedepolitiikka, 51(3), 40–44. https://doi.org/10.58957/tp.185705
Text and photo: Vesna Holubek