The Russian invasion of Ukraine, on 24th February 2022, was met with widespread condemnation across Europe, with many universities and higher education-focussed national and regional organisations issuing their own public statements about the invasion and subsequent conflict and, in some cases, taking specific action in relation to one or both of…

This paper discusses Finnish-Russian relations from the perspective of cooperation in higher education, and particularly Finnish-Russian double degree programmes prior to 2022. It asks how internal stakeholders, in double degree programmes perceived the role of their cooperation from the point of view of interstate relations, and how cooperation…

Utilising data from 10 semi-structured interviews (n = 5), this article explores the diplomatic challenges and concerns Canadian secondary teachers faced when teaching about political violence and the strategies they employed while navigating these. Drawing insight from the notion of 'everyday diplomacy', the article frames teaching as a kind of…

This briefing reports on recent developments affecting Europe's recognition regimes -- both professional and academic. Currently, the principal change factor is the drive to digitalise, accelerated by the new circumstances created by the pandemic. The crisis in Ukraine, too, has prompted a range of initiatives. Meanwhile, uncertainty still…

The Republic of Moldova is located in a tense geopolitical environment between the European Union (EU) and the Russian Federation. As the EU and Russia have incorporated higher education in their foreign policy agendas, this article analyses (1) whether the higher education policies of the EU and Russia are in competition in Moldova and (2) how…

Deception is a misrepresentation of reality that attracted many researchers examining it from various perspectives. However, no due attention has been given to the discursive deception strategies in the work of think tanks. This study aims at exposing the deception strategies deployed in the conservative American think tanks' discourse which…

The article introduces a special issue of "Policy Futures in Education" on changes and challenges in educational policies and systems of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The countries in the region share some characteristics, such as their historical experience with the authoritarian-socialist or communist rule and its impact on…

In this case study, we explore pedagogical practices that could promote powerful knowledge in school history. We analyse teaching sessions conducted by two teachers. The cases were selected from an observation study that focused on historical literacy in Finnish schools. While Michael Young's ideas of powerful knowledge have gained considerable…

Language education and schooling are important topics in post-conflict contexts. This study explores the existing situation of mother tongue education in the de facto Abkhazia. The study had the following research questions: (1) What was the ethnic composition of Abkhazia during the Soviet Union, and how Russian occupation changed it? (2) How well…

The purpose of this paper is to review the historical facts related to conversion of indigenous people of the Kazakh steppe from Islam to Christianity and the conversion of the Russian migrants from Orthodoxy to Islam in Kazakhstan in the nineteenth-early twentieth century. The study deals with the laws that were detrimental to Islam and reforms…

This article attempts to address the issue of prisoners of war through the prism of international law. The object of research is the work of the Commission to investigate the Entente's complaints of violation of Hague Convention on Treatment of Prisoners of War by German authorities. After the armistice, the governments of the Entente sent notes…

The article expands the debate about the interaction and conflict of linguistic commodification with other values attached to a language. It interrogates Russian dominant discourse produced between 2010 and 2015, focusing on how it attributes the values of "pride" and "profit" to the Russian language in three transnational…

The contemporary international situation is characterized by the humanitarian crisis and a great wave of refugees. The border crossing point of a host country separates the refugees` former life full of suffering and pain and the expectations of a new peaceful life. Here a language mediator is considered like a person who can show the refugee the…

The extremely complex relationship between mental and spatial boundaries in Eastern Europe is visible in the matter of the border between Belarus and Poland, between Eastern and Western Europe, between the European Union and the Russian spheres of influence. Historically, Russia's imperial policy towards to North-Western Province (nowadays…

The relevance of the topic is determined by the new challenges faced by the Russian state in modern conditions that have a significant impact on public administration, which entails the need for its comprehensive modernization. In this regard, this article is aimed at the disclosure of social and socio-cultural aspects of the modernization of…