Jenna Mittelmeier

My role is Senior Lecturer in International Education at the Manchester Institute of Education, where my research focuses broadly on the internationalisation of higher education. I am particularly interested in practices with international students, including the ways they are framed by their universities and wider host societies. Within that, my work looks at how higher education curricula and pedagogies are shaped by internationalisation and through teaching international students. My research takes a critical perspective against pervasive deficit narratives of international students, reflecting on issues of power, privilege, and ethics in internationalised classrooms.

My teaching contributions include leading the EDUC70732 course unit (Internationalising the Curriculum) for the MA International Education programme. For our PGCert programme, I co-lead a course unit focusing on Internationalisation of Higher Education (EDUC61621).

I am also the Associate Director for Research Training of PhD researchers for the School of Environment, Education, and Development (SEED). In this role, I lead on the training and researcher development provisions for PhD researchers across five disciplines.

I am the lead editor for the upcoming book Research with International Students: Critical Conceptual and Methodological Considerations (Routledge), alongside Sylvie Lomer and Kalyani Unkule. This is a comprehensive methodological guide for research that includes international students as participants, due for publication in 2023. Our Research with International Students website provides a wide range of methodological resources for this subfield. 

My research interests include: internationalisation of higher education, pedagogies with international students, curriculum internationalisation, international students' experiences, and representations of international students.

Inquiries from prospective PhD researchers:
I am happy to read research proposals from prospective PhD researchers about projects related to the internationalisation of higher education and international students. I would encourage potential PhD researchers to review our Research with International Students website when developing their proposals. Please note that I only supervise projects which are critical in scope and purposefully seek to reject deficit narratives of international students.

I currently supervise the following PhD colleagues:

• Yilan Guo: "Chinese international students' engagement in multicultural group work in a UK university"
• Daian Huang: "Internationalisation abroad and at a distance: Comparing the transition experiences of international students studying at UK higher education institutions"
• Luman Zhou: "Investigating how Chinese international students understand, develop, and apply critical thinking in master's essays"
• Ying Yang: "The role of educational agents in China on the marketisation of UK higher education"
• Bowen Zhang: "The influence of Sino-Western exchange on internationalisation of Chinese higher education"

My completed supervisees include:

• Dr Bukola Oyinloye (The Open University): "Parents' perspectives and practices around the schooling of their children in rural Northern Nigeria"