Transnational Higher Education Networks for Learning and Teaching (TNLTs) in Geography are networks of academic geographers that facilitate a common interest in exchanging knowledge about higher education learning and teaching. Participation within these learning and teaching networks arguably provides benefits of information sharing but is often compromised by barriers such as finance and time. The aim of this study is to contribute to geographies of higher education by exploring academic networking practices for learning and teaching through geographers motivations, experiences and outcomes of participation alongside the role that technology plays in facilitating these. The subject of learning and teaching is an increasingly important area of study. The complex relationship between the practices of learning and teaching alongside research and administration duties within higher education has been previously explored yet little discussion is offered on academics who focus on learning and teaching practice. However, within the context of human geography research TNLTs as defined within this thesis have only received cursory treatment. This study situates TNLTs under the umbrella of geographies of higher education that are increasingly being studied with focuses on transnational academic mobility, international student mobility and international collaborations in higher education. This study sketches a conceptual framework for engaging in academic networking by bringing research together on TNLTs, Continuing Professional Development (CPD), higher education on a global scale, Communities of Practice (CoP) and the technology driven-network society that comprise five bodies of literature that have not been considered collectively before. Due to a lack of literature and previous work on TNLTs, this thesis applies grounded theorising that generated findings out of the data rather than testing a hypothesis. Such inductive methodology develops and constructs theory and is a useful approach to researching TNLTs because it also allows for a combination of different research methods. In this thesis, various ways to access TNLTs are blended to effectively study them, including both face-to-face and online surveys and interviews.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-252). / Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of field and capital, this thesis examines the disciplinary differences in the social sciences concerning the possession of scientific capital and levels of engagement with academic and non-academic constituencies in three African universities, Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, Makerere University in Uganda and the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. Contrary to approaches that regard disciplinary fields as homogeneous epistemic and social spaces on the grounds of the principles of the stratification of scientific fields, this study investigates the relationship between the hierarchical position of selected discipline-clusters and the levels of engagement with both internal and external constituencies. The study reveals that levels of possession of scientific capital have a significant effect on the differentiation of the disciplinary fields, both within and across institutions, and on the levels of engagement with (internal) academic and (external) non-academic entities. The analysis shows that scientific capital does not determine the level and forms of engagement with different constituencies. However, the differences across discipline-clusters at institutional level reflect the engagement with academic rather than with non-academic constituencies. In other words, this means that the level of engagement varies more between different disciplines when the engagement is related to academic entities than is the case when non-academic entities are concerned. Therefore, engagement is not a major discriminator amongst institutions. Scientific capital is what gives academics prestige and symbolic capital to the institution. The significance of this is that academics from different discipline-clusters might have different experiences of engagement with different constituencies. I further conclude that the growing importance that the notion of engagement has for the university is, perhaps, too simple if it does not account for the complex and multifaceted characteristics of disciplinary and institutional fields.