Cities of the South, Cities of the North

In the wake of the end of the cold-war and the demise of the tripartite conceptual division of the First, Second and Third Worlds, the latter concept has been superseded by the notion of the &#8216;Global South&#8217;. This notion is a flexible one referring to the developing nations of the once-colonized sections of the globe. The concept does not merely register shifts in geopolitics and in the respective affiliations of nations and the economic transformations that have occurred. It also registers an emergent perception of a new set of relationships between nations of the South. It is the task of this project to explore those &#8216;lateral&#8217; south-south cultural connections by mobilizing a network of prominent Global-South universities (UFF, Brazil; UNAM, Mexico; Wits, South Africa; UCAD, Senegal; JNU, India) with other universities in the southern hemisphere (UWA, Australia; SNU, Korea). Erich Auerbach is the Visiting Chair of Global Literary Studies at the University of TübingenCities of the South, Cities of the North, symposium, ICI Berlin, 14 December 2015 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e151214

The political economy of high skills:Higher Education in knowledge-based labour markets

<p>A successful transition into the knowledge economy depends upon higher level skills, creating unprecedented pressure on university systems to provide labour markets with the skills needed. But what are the political economy dynamics underlying national patterns of high skill formation? The article proposes a framework to theorize the relationship between higher education systems and knowledge-based labour markets based on two dimensions: the type of knowledge economy predominant in a given country and the extent of inter-university competition. It is argued that the former explains what type of higher level skills will be sought by employers and cultivated by governments, while the latter helps us understanding why some higher education systems are more open to satisfying labour market demands compared to others. A set of diverse country case studies (Britain, Germany, South Korea and the Netherlands) is employed to illustrate the theory.</p