Public Lecture Thoughts on the Future of the Global University
MarK C. Elliott
Vice Provost for International Affairs
Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History
Harvard University
Wednesday, 26.03.2025, 17.00, Lecture hall, Marsilius-Kolleg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 130.1
The dominant trend in higher education around the world for many decades now has been toward ever higher levels of international collaboration and exchange. The number of students seeking degrees at institutions located outside their native countries has steadily increased, while a growing proportion of the world’s scientific papers are published by multinational teams of scholars. This trend, observable for much of the post-WWII era, accelerated during the period of intensified globalization following the end of the Cold War. In recent years, doubts about the virtues of globalization, shifts in geopolitics, and systemic shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to questions at many research universities about future trends in international academic collaboration.
This talk considers where we have been, where we are heading, where we might want to go, and how we might get there.
Mark C. Elliott
Mark Elliott is Vice Provost of International Affairs at Harvard University and the Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and the Department of History.
As vice provost, Elliott oversees and advances international initiatives, extending the global reach of Harvard’s research and teaching activities, building academic collaborations, and deepening ties to peer institutions worldwide. In addition to guiding Harvard’s overall global strategy and engagement, he supports its extended international community, including over ten thousand students, scholars, and faculty in Cambridge and Boston, and tens of thousands of alumni around the world.
Elliott is an authority on the last four centuries of Chinese history, particularly the Qing period (1636-1911). His research encompasses the history of relations between China and its nomadic frontier, focusing on questions of ethnicity, institutions, and empire. An expert in Manchu studies, he is known as a pioneering figure in the “New Qing History,” which emphasizes the imprint of Inner Asian traditions upon China’s last imperial state.
A graduate of Yale, Elliott earned his PhD in History at the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught at Harvard since 2003.