From July 6 to 11, 2025, Assistant Professor Yu Jingran was invited to attend the 5th ISA Forum of Sociology at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco.
The International Sociological Association (ISA) is one of the most influential academic organizations in the global field of sociology, and this year’s ISA Forum of Sociology is a major academic event held by the ISA every four years. With the theme "Knowing Justice in the Anthropocene", the forum aims to explore how justice is understood and realized against the backdrop of global climate crisis, social inequality, and the reconstruction of knowledge order. Focusing on topics such as social structure transformation, disputes over knowledge systems, and the discourse expression of the Global South, the forum attracted scholars from around the world to conduct in-depth cross-cultural and interdisciplinary exchanges.
On the morning of July 8, Yu Jingran participated in a roundtable forum titled "The Role of Education in the Epoch of Anthropocene," which included four thematic modules: "Digital Innovation," "Higher Education," "Gender Perspective," and "Inequality." She took part in the thematic roundtable on "Higher Education," co-organized by Professor Rachel Brooks from the University of Oxford and Professor Jill Timms from the University of Surrey. Scholars at the roundtable engaged in in-depth exchanges and discussions on topics such as widening participation in UK higher education, educational equity and social mobility, the localization process of sociology in the Global South, and female scholars in the "ivory tower elite."
On the afternoon of the same day, Yu Jingran presented her conference paper titled "Competing Imaginaries and Renegotiating Knowledge Hierarchies: International Student Experiences and Perceptions at a Chinese Branch Campus in Malaysia" at the panel session "International Student Mobility and Contested Knowledges," which was co-organized by Professor Rachel Brooks from the University of Oxford and Professor Vera Spangler from the University of Surrey.
Based on field survey data collected at the Xiamen University Malaysia Campus, this study uses the theoretical lens of knowledge geopolitics to conduct an in-depth analysis of the agentic strategies adopted by international students to negotiate, respond to, and even reconstruct the Western-centered knowledge hierarchy within a postcolonial context. The presentation addressed the core theme of "knowledge justice" of this year’s annual conference and received positive feedback and in-depth discussions from participating scholars.
This participation not only showed the theoretical explorations and empirical accumulations of scholars from our institute in the fields of sociology and cross-border higher education research but also further strengthened the exchanges and cooperation between our institute and the global interdisciplinary research network in sociology.
