This conference brings together doctoral students, researchers, higher education practitioners, institutional leaders, and policymakers from around the world to examine how higher education systems and university institutions can respond to global volatilities with resilience and responsibility.

A distinctive feature of the conference is its emphasis on organisational and management perspectives in higher education research. The conference positions universities not simply as educational institutions or policy actors, but as complex organisations operating within volatile global environments.

We therefore seek to foreground questions of organisational resilience and change; governance and strategy; innovation; leadership; decision-making; and ethical responsibility in times of uncertainty and disruption.

The conference will provide points of inspiration and create an interdisciplinary space connecting higher education research with organisation studies, and also with other disciplines such as economics; politics; international development; policy studies and digital technologies.

In doing so, we seek to encourage new understandings about how higher education institutions across the world organise, govern, and sustain themselves amid global turbulence and rapid social change.

We welcome contributions from:

• Doctoral students and early-career researchers, particularly those from the DBA HEM community
  
• Mid- and late-career scholars
  
• Higher education practitioners and professional staff
  
• University leaders and administrators
  
• Policymakers and government agencies
  

The ICHEM 2027 conference will include:

• Keynote plenaries
  
• Policy and leadership panels
  
• Research paper sessions where contributors will present submitted work
  
• Conference buffet dinner and live music
  

Important dates

Submission

• The submission portal is now open
  
• Submission deadline: 20 January 2027
  
• Please submit by sending your abstract to ichemconf@bath.ac.uk
• Notification of decisions: end February 2027
  

Registration

• Registration opens September 2026
• Conference registration deadline: 1 May 2027

The conference has four broad themes centred on higher education’s relationships with society, the natural environment, governance and technology:

This theme explores the changing nature of international higher education and its relationship with society in a context of social responsibilities, geopolitical instability and shifting ecosystem dynamics.

We encourage critical and strategic perspectives on how institutions can develop accountability to their local communities and sustain responsible global engagement under conditions of uncertainty and fragmentation.

Questions of inclusion and equity are also increasingly central to debates about the future of higher education. We are particularly interested in the social responsibilities of higher education institutions within their communities, both locally and globally.

Possible topics:

• The future of internationalisation
  
• Student and staff mobility
  
• Transnational education and branch campuses
  
• Research collaboration under geopolitical tension
  
• Gender and racial diversity in academia
  
• International partnerships and ethical engagement
  
• Academic freedom and global cooperation
  
• Decolonial perspectives and epistemic justice
  
• Regionalization and diversification strategies
  
• International recruitment and social justice
  
• Disability and neurodiversity inclusion and accessibility
  
• Student well-being and belonging
  
• Campus activism and protest
  
• Local and regional collaboration
  
• Inclusive pedagogies, learning environments and assessment
  
• Widening participation and lifelong learning
  
• Humanitarian roles of universities in war and conflict
  
• Social impact measurement
  
• Universities, autocracies and democratic resilience
  

This theme explores both the universities’ responsibilities to protect the natural environment, developing a sustainable relationship with socioecological systems as well as its resilience within a disrupted context of environmental change, involving significant disturbance for many higher education campuses and educational ecosystems.

Sustainability commitments have been widely signalled by many universities, however in an age of accelerating climate warming, these engagements do not appear to keep up with the imperative or have yet to create significant impact.

Meanwhile, many universities across the world are increasingly vulnerable, facing higher risks of operational disruption due to the increasing rate of extreme weather events, rising sea-levels and pollution.

Possible topics:

• SDGs as a framework for university sustainability in different geographic contexts
  
• Tensions for sustainability within internationalisation strategies
  
• Sustainability impact measures and metrics
  
• Greenwashing and university virtue signally
  
• Environmental harms and neo-liberal epistemes circulating in universities
  
• Climate instability and the resilience of higher education systems to crises
  
• Organisational resilience and institutional adaptation
  
• Crisis governance and institutional learning
  
• The role of universities in addressing global environmental challenges
  
• Institutional responses to uncertainty and systemic shocks
  

How universities manage themselves in turbulent times requires a responsiveness to new regulations and policy frameworks. Governments introduce new policies that shape university’s strategy where new organisational approaches are required to address uncertainty, inequality, technological change, mobility issues and global competition.

This theme foregrounds organisation studies and management perspectives in understanding how higher education institutions respond to constraints and complexity in ever-changing environments.

Possible topics:

• Evidence-based policy
• Comparative higher education policy
• Governance reforms and accountability
• Rankings, metrics and compliance
• Organisational resilience and institutional adaptation
• Leadership, committees and the practice of strategic university management
• Funding and financial sustainability
• Regulatory responses to digitisation and AI
• Crisis governance and institutional learning
• Due diligence and strategic imagination
• Intra-organisational dynamics and disciplinary relationships
• Organisational identity and legitimacy
• Global competition and strategic positioning
• Policy responses to geopolitical risks
• University investments and ethical accountability
• Research security and knowledge diplomacy

Digital technologies and AI are reshaping teaching, learning, administration, and research across higher education systems.

The conference is particularly interested in how digitisation intersects with how we organise higher education ecosystems and how digitization facilitates and inhibits matters of inclusion, governance, institutional resilience, and educational quality and integrity.

Possible topics:

• AI and its effects on the human mind and learning
• Digitisation and the future of traditional higher education ecosystems
• The future of work and preparing to contribute to a digital age
• The lifetime value of a digitized university education
• Digital transformation and institutional strategy
• Online and hybrid learning models
• Data insights and organisational capabilities
• Data governance and digital ethics
• Technology and the student experience
• The university and cybersecurity
• Digital inequality and access
• AI, integrity and doctoral writing
• Platformisation of higher education ‘services’

We welcome contributions from doctoral research students and practitioners as well as academic faculty. We particularly welcome innovative and interdisciplinary perspectives that make links to the conference themes and connect higher education research with organisation studies, management, governance, and policy analysis.

Submissions may include:

• Research papers, including conceptual or empirical studies
  
• Policy and practice papers or case studies
  

Please submit an abstract of your presentation for consideration by the organising committee. It should be a maximum of 800 words excluding references and should clearly outline the purpose or research question, the methodology or approach and key arguments or findings.

Submissions will be evaluated on their relevance to the conference themes; originality and significance; clarity of argument; and potential for contribution to research, policy or practice.

For enquiries, please contact: ichemconf@bath.ac.uk.