Border crossing networks : virtual makes it real

Informed by new interdisciplinary network theories and phenomenology this paper set out to undertake a preliminary study of the use of blogs as a tool for intercultural interaction and reflection for students on an international exchange program. The process of analysing blogs lead, however, to a deeper questioning of the premises underlying the “Border Crossings’ exchange program. This, in turn, required analysing the very processes involved in the production of this paper, which is itself a product of ‘interdisciplinary research in a changing and challenging world.” The international exchange program ‘Border Crossings: People and Places’ is a joint mobility project between four European and four Australian universities (one of which has an offshore campus in Singapore). The program aims to enhance understanding of the issues surrounding global migration which affect Europe and Australia within their wider geo-cultural contexts, including Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The Border Crossings theme addresses cross-cultural communication, international relations, languages, development studies, history, politics, law and humanities. Its primary objective is to encourage innovative curricula, academic cooperation and student mobility through a network of exchanges involving 64 students who crisscross the world to spend a semester at a partner institution and 40 faculty staff who undertake two week exchanges. As part of its innovative intent, a blog site was created for students to interact online. Thus, the students are linked in a web of relations that span across eight universities and five countries over four semesters between 2011 and 2013. In weekly posts students reflect upon experiences of space, place, movement, transition and culture – as well as subject themes of the project. The blog site is thus a space in which to articulate the everyday experiences of global education, even as it is simultaneously involved in creating the networks that constitute global education. Through blogging, the Border Crossings mobility program offers more than the movement of bodies between institutions in Euclidean space; it is also crossing (out) borders between reality and virtuality – creating a new geographic imaginary of networked, relational, space