Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Startseite

This panel explores how contemporary instruments of European higher education governance such as digital infrastructures, institutional alliances, quality assurance regimes, pedagogical innovation agendas, and regional scholarly communities shape policy implementation and produce uneven outcomes across systems and institutions. It shows how standardisation and coordination at EU and national levels generate measurable improvements in administrative performance, collaboration, and educational practice, while simultaneously reinforcing asymmetries linked to digital capacity, institutional positioning, disciplinary traditions, and policy environments. Focusing on governance in action, the contributions examine how rules, technologies, and communicative practices are interpreted, mediated, and translated within universities and scholarly fields. Together, they advance a practice-sensitive account of European higher education governance that foregrounds implementation, intermediaries, and capability conditions, highlighting how shared agendas travel unevenly across the European Higher Education Area.