Abstract

Many EU projects are premised on the assumption that collaboration
between academics and students from different national contexts adds value to
knowledge production and to learning. It is very rare to come across accounts of
how challenging such cross-cultural collaboration can be, especially when the
notion ‘culture’ is expanded to include both national and gendered identities, as
well as cultures embedded in particular academic disciplines. This paper sets out
to explore the ‘critical incidents’ that arose in the context of an Erasmus
curriculum development project, showing how these ‘incidents’ open a window
onto the complex and challenging processes that come into play in cross-cultural
and inter-disciplinary settings.