The 'international' in geography: concepts, actors, challenges

This chapter critically interrogates the notion of the ‘international’ in the discipline of geography. Drawing on interdisciplinary conceptual debates about internationalisation strategies in higher education, the analysis compares the geographical reach of the four International Geographical Congresses (IGCs) in Paris 1984, Sydney 1988, Cologne 2012, and Beijing 2016. This chapter shows that between the last decade of the Cold War and the greater geopolitical multiverse in the first decade of the twenty-first century, geographical knowledge production and exchange not only diversified and decentralised on a global scale but also experienced a profound shift from a distinct Anglo-American internationalism towards a more complex multicultural internationalism. Consequently, I argue that the international nature of geographical knowledge production and exchange is relational because international conference experiences vary by the geopolitical, socio-economic, cultural, linguistic, and academic positionality of the event and its participants. Policy-relevant conclusions highlight the great value of the IGCs for facilitating international experiences for growing numbers of attendees from the events’ host countries; they stress the important politics of choosing host cities in different world regions and offering flexible conference delivery formats and registration options; and they call for a greater emphasis on the development of intercultural skills to achieve more equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in geography.