Dr Vassiliki Papatsiba
Vassiliki Papatsiba is a Reader in Social Sciences – Education at Cardiff University’s School of Social Sciences, which she joined in October 2022. Her research in Political Sociology applied to international higher education focuses on three key areas: internationalisation and academic mobility; international research collaboration and global equity; and universities’ knowledge exchange with international and local communities.
Dr Papatsiba has held significant leadership positions, including serving on the Steering Group of the World Universities Network’s Global Challenges in Higher Education and Research (2018-2022) and leading the OECD’s Country Review on Knowledge Exchange in Lithuanian Universities (2021). She previously directed the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Sheffield (2017-2020).
Her research has attracted competitive funding from European bodies and UK Research Councils. She was PI of the EU-funded project ‘European Universities in Knowledge Societies’ and held a Marie Curie Fellowship at Oxford University. Her work spans several interconnected areas: the impact of Brexit on UK higher education and research partnerships, knowledge exchange and research impact in universities, European higher education policy with focus on student mobility, and international academic collaboration networks. Her early work examined student experiences in the Erasmus programme, receiving the second prize for best thesis in social sciences in France (2002).
Her latest book with Simon Marginson, ‘Brexit, EU students and UK higher education: Broken bridges’ (Bloomsbury, 2025), examines Brexit’s profound impact on UK higher education. It reveals how the loss of EU students represents more than just a demographic shift – it signals deeper changes in institutional finances, educational quality, and cultural diversity. The book demonstrates how Brexit has intensified damaging competition between UK universities, creating pressures that threaten both educational quality and institutional sustainability, while fostering insularity that undermines Britain’s position in global knowledge networks. This analysis is particularly timely as UK higher education faces its most severe financial crisis since the 1990s, complicated by fraught political debates and policies about migration that frame international students as migrants. The book demonstrates how these interconnected challenges are reshaping both the sector’s international character and its capacity to rebuild vital European connections.
