Die OeAD-GmbH und das BMBWF haben mithilfe österreichischer Hochschulen ein Nachschlagewerk zu Beispielen guter Praxis von Auslandsmobilität und der Reflexion von interkulturellen Erfahrungen vor Ort gestaltet. Das Handbuch bietet für jeden etwas: für Studierende, Lehrende, junge Forscher/innen und das allgemeine Hochschulpersonal gleichermaßen wie für die Hochschulleitungen. Es spricht sowohl Hochschulen an, die seit Jahren erfolgreich Mobilitäten und Kooperationen betreuen oder Internationalisation at home praktizieren, wie auch jene, die in diesen Bereichen gerne aktiver werden möchten. Der vorliegende Band bietet Anregungen, zeigt aktuelle Beispiele auf und soll Diskussionen anstoßen.
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Since the late nineties, there has throughout Europe been a growing focus on internationalisation of curricula. This may be seen as a reaction to the traditional and sustained focus on internationalisation abroad. It became clear that internationalisation abroad would always be a domain of a (small) minority of students. Therefore, if intercultural and international competences would be considered essential for all students, the curriculum would remain the only available tool to ensure that students would actually acquire these. This was the situation in 1999, when Bengt Nilsson coined the term 'Internationalisation at home' and it had remained fundamentally unchanged.
Long before the COVID pandemic, we had already realised that traditional forms of internationalisation had their limitations. Mobility of students had remained limited to a small minority of students, a ‘cultural elite’. We had also become aware that student mobility was mostly from the global north to the south and that some of its effects were unwanted, and could lead to ‘white saviourism’. Finally, before the COVID pandemic we were already discussing the CO2 imprint of mobility and considering ‘greener’ forms of mobility of students and staff. More than twenty years ago, around 2000, attempts had already emerged to bring the benefits of internationalisation to all students through internationalisation at home. At the time, this was defined as “Any internationally related activity with the exception of outbound student and staff mobility”. This definition did not mention explicitly that all students were targeted and also omitted the purpose of these activities.
