5th World Universities Forum - The role and future of the University in a changing world

In 2012, the Forum will be held at the University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece from 8 to 10 January. The Forum examines the role and future of the University in a changing world. It is ambitious in its intellectual and practical, agenda-setting scope, and broad in its themes. The World Universities Forum is held annually in different locations around the world. The Forum was held in Davos, Switzerland in 2008; in conjunction with the Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay, Mumbai, India in 2009; in the Congress Center Davos, Davos, Switzerland in 2010; and in Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong in 2011.
Themes
Theme 1: In the Interest of the Academy: Perspectives on the Nature, Purpose and Working of the University
Theme 1A: Knowledge Designs
        * What constitutes academic knowledge? What are its particularities, its virtues, its limitations?
        * Paradigm shifts in knowledge making socially networked knowledge and the ‘wisdom of the crowd’.
        * Research methodologies and analytical processes – is academic knowledge more reliable?
        * Knowledge systems – peer review, publishing infrastructures, dissemination and access.
        * Basic and applied research – changing distinctions.
        * Research ethics and applications of research.
        * Discipinarity and interdisciplinarity – trends to specialisation or interconnectivity.
        * Changing disciplinary distinctions – the sciences, social sciences, humanities, arts, professions.
        * Universality and knowledge transfer versus partiality and the localised specificity of knowledge.
        * Objectivity and perspectivism in knowledge.
        * Knowledge and culture – what kinds of knowledge are literature, art, and identity?
        * Public domain or commercialisation – paths to society and market for academic knowledge.
        * Intellectual property – forms of ownership and incentives to innovate.
Theme 1B: Learning Designs
        * Learning in the University – how does it work? What is distinctive? How is it changing? How should it change?
        * Digital technologies in learning.
        * Ubiquitous learning – anywhere and anytime, just enough and just in time.
        * The role of the University in lifelong and lifewide learning.
        * Access and equity in higher education – addressing local, national and global inequalities.
        * Addressing learner diversity, and student and faculty mobility.
        * Program alternatives – core curriculum or choice.
        * Instructional design for higher education.
        * Assessment and evaluation of learning.
Theme 1C: Organisational Designs
        * Academic governance – the peculiarities of managing the University.
        * Academic freedom.
        * Resourcing the University – financing higher education.
        * Leadership and organizational development in higher education.
        * Public and private education.
        * Impacts of commercialisation and privatisation.
        * Marketing and fundraising.
        * Research management and training.
        * Assessment of research quality.
        * Program and curriculum design.
        * Evaluation of teaching.
Theme 1D: Designs on the World
        * Collaborations cross-institutional, cross-sectoral and international research programs.
        * International education – the University as a global player.
        * Community service and outreach.
        * The public intellectual in national and international communities.
        * Informing the world – connecting with the media, traditional and new.
        * Inter-University networks and alliances.
        * Private-public partnerships.
        * Relationships with governments, corporations and NGOs.
        * Educational and research capacity-building.
        * Global population movements and the shifting demography of campus.
        * Knowledge movements – migration, diasporic networks and brain drain.
        * Knowledge societies – securing the strategic centrality for universities in contemporary economic and social agendas.
        * Practice orientations – universities in the making of the professions.
        * The economics of higher education.
        * The economics of research and innovation.
        * Research, innovation and education as measures of social progress.

Theme 2: Academic Interests: Setting Intellectual and Practical Agendas
Theme 2A: Sciences
        * Disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in the sciences.
        * The changing work of scientists.
        * Pedagogies for changing sciences.
        * Scientific responsibilities – climate change, sustainability and health.
        * Science and ethics – sensitive subjects and experimental methods.
        * Basic and applied sciences – changing dynamics.
        * Applied sciences and social meanings – computer interfaces, design methods and other humanising relationships.
Theme 2B: Technologies
        * Technology and human interests.
        * The social web and the digital divide.
        * Biomedical technologies and their impacts.
        * Participatory design.
Theme 2C: Cultures, Identities, Humanisms
        * Global society – changing balances of economic and intellectual power.
        * Faiths and rationalisms.
        * Cultures, civilisations and globalisms.
        * Independences and interdependencies of states, societies and cultures.
        * Multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism and identity politics.
        * Differences – class, locale, race, sex-sexuality-gender, (dis)abilities, culture, language and affinity.
        * Cultural production and learning.
Theme 2D: Resources and Welfare
        * Social capital.
        * Economics and human welfare.
        * Inequality and its remedies.
        * Trade, fair and free; physical and intellectual properties.
        * Development and uneven development.
        * Social services and the professions.
Theme 2E: Governance
        * Self-managing institutions, from the local to the global.
        * Changing patterns of sovereignty.
        * Politics and social formation, from the local to the international.
        * Human rights.
        * Non-government organizations.
        * Regulation and deregulation of knowledge regimes and professions.
        * Intellectual property laws and knowledge systems.