Alexander Ahrenkiel Bendt Støvelbæk

Forskning

Introduction to current research:

I am currently undertaking an independent research project as a double degree PhD fellow of Roskilde University, Denmark and East China Normal University, Shanghai CN, with a scholarship from the Sino-Danish Center for Research and Education. The research concerns Chinese students learning processes at a Sino-Danish University in Beijing. The PhD research builds on the findings from my master’s thesis entitled “Students’ Struggles for Cultural and Academic Recognition: A Socio-analysis of an Intercultural Learning Environment in a Sino-Danish Higher Education Collaboration” (Roskilde University, 2017).

Moving from socio-analysis to psycho-social theory, in my PhD I am exploring the significance of culture and socialisation to Chinese students' learning processes in a transnational education environment i China. I aim to understand the critical and utopian potential of international educational experience in a Chinese societal context, understanding cultural modernisation as an endogenous process, rooted in the concrete experience of humans and changes in their self-perception and social desires through education and in their everyday life.

Background and qualifications:

I received my academic training as an educational researcher (MA) at Roskilde University (DK), Austral Universidad (ARG) and Aarhus University (DK). I have a strong experience in conducting ethnographic field work in educational settings and doing studies on higher education in a globalising world. More generally, I am occupied with the philosophical and sociological foundations of education, and the cultural and social foundations of human learning processes. I aspire to produce knowledge on education for a more socially just and peaceful world.

Main areas of interest (research, theory and knowledge):

Educational development
The cultural foundations of learning
International education
The sociological and philosophical underpinnings of education
Normativity and social critique
Cultural diversity, tolerance and human rights
Cultural modernization
Life history and socialisation

Other experiences:

Prior to commencing my doctoral research project I have worked with study- and career counselling and in educational management and development at Roskilde University.
For years, I have also been a volunteer for the international educational organisation CISV International. I have participated in several international CISV summer camps, as a child delegate, a youth leader, and as the leader of delegations of children, in places such as the U.S, the Phillippines, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Denmark. I have also volunteered as staff of a summer camp for 11-year olds from around the world in Denmark. There is a clear line between my international and educational experiences with children and adults in CISV, and the interest I pursue in my research, namely, the imagination and ideal of a more just and peaceful world society, built on cultural understanding, human rights, respect for biodiversity and conflict resolution in a global perspective.