Moving ideas and mobile researchers: Australia in the global context

This paper draws from the ARC Discovery project calledMoving Ideas: Mobile Policies, Researchers and Connections in the Social Sciences and Humanities — Australia in the Global Context (2006–2009). This project explored the ways that ideas travel and how knowledge transforms through travel. One aspect of the study was the critical examination of various research policies around the world that are associated with moving ideas and moving researchers. These are often coupled with notions of “brain drain-gain/mobility” and diaspora. A second focus was on the mobility biographies of globally mobile intellectuals with various links to Australia and on the implications of their mobility for their ideas, politics and national and trans-national identifications. It is our view that the actual experiences and insights of such people have the potential to enhance researcher (academic) mobility policies. A third concern has been to address the question of what it means to globalise the research imagination. In addressing this question we have drawn on leading researchers from around the globe who undertake research on globalisation itself. The paper to follow draws from selected publications associated with this project. The book from the project, to be completed in 2010, is titledMoving Ideas and Mobile Intellectuals. It should be noted at the outset that our focus in the project and in this discussion paper is on researchers in the social sciences and humanities including but not exclusively educational researchers. We begin by asking what it means to globalise research and how is this related to the nation-state’?