This qualitative study examined how the scientific journal PLOS ONE assembled its editorial board, which is made up of more than 10,000 academic editors based in 131 countries. The study investigated how the board’s geographic diversity is enacted by the human and nonhuman actors of the assemblage. PLOS ONE is an open-access (OA) mega-journal launched in 2006 by the nonprofit organization Public Library of Science (PLOS). It publishes over 16,000 papers yearly, covering more than 200 scientific subjects of science and medicine. I drew on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which proposes that processes, ideas, organizations, or objects are continuously generated within a network of relationships between human and nonhuman actors. I used the case study methodology and employed two qualitative research methods. First, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 academic editors from different fields, including biology and life sciences, chemistry, medicine and health sciences, physics, and social sciences. These editors are affiliated with research institutions across 14 countries. Additionally, I interviewed PLOS leaders, staff members, and a representative from an external contractor. Second, I employed documentary analysis of organizational documents and online secondary data. Findings showed that the human and nonhuman actors of the PLOS ONE editorial board reproduce biases in science based on authors’ and editors’ geographic origin, the journal’s size and the low diversity of PLOS staff members. I also identified that APCs (Article Processing Charges) act as mediators that trigger betrayals among the actors, which has consequences on the stability of the assemblage, especially in terms of trust between the publisher and the scientific community. Finally, this study also identified that publishing an OA mega-journal has contradictions and unexpected effects on the publishing landscape due to its large scale.

This dissertation research explores the complexity of transformations of academic lives and academic identities along the multiple, non-linear, conflicting, and paradoxical trajectories of the pre-Soviet, Soviet, and post-Soviet times and spaces. Academic literature on the post-Soviet transformations of higher education has usually focused on structural reforms and policy changes, as well as their compatibility with the European and Western higher education policy agenda. Guided by the theoretical insights from the decolonial and post-Socialist transformation studies, this dissertation research intends to decenter the education policies and reforms from being a focal point of analysis; instead, it spotlights the transformation of Georgian academics through their memories, lived experiences, and imaginations about the future. The study offers insights into personal and collective experiences of being and becoming an academic in the process of navigating the evolving historical, political, cultural, and institutional contexts at three public universities in Georgia. Drawing on the narrative-ethnographic methodology, this study explores the complicated scenes and nuances of Georgian academic space by portraying how academics construct, reconstruct, adjust, resist, negotiate, and reinvent their academic selves during the post-Soviet transformations. Diffractive analysis of the narratives and ethnographic observations illustrates multiple intra-actions of academic identities through various temporal and spatial reconfigurations, revealing that the Soviet past is not left behind, and the European future is not that certain. Instead, the liminal academic space is haunted by the (re)awakened pasts and (re)imagined futures, and their inseparability enacts various co-existing scenarios of defuturing and refuturing of academic identities.

Higher education in Ethiopia has undergone significant expansion since the 1990s, with increases in the number of institutions, professors, and students. In the context of this rapid expansion, the Higher Diploma Program (HDP) was introduced to improve the quality of higher education by training university faculty in pedagogy and shifting pedagogy from teacher-centered to student-centered methods, specifically focusing on the introduction of Active Learning Methods (ALMs). This dissertation examines how the HDP was introduced and implemented in Ethiopian higher education through the theoretical lens of education policy transfer/borrowing and decolonial studies. Using ALMs as a case of a borrowed education policy, this research explores policy-practice gaps and factors hindering implementation of ALMs across different institutional and disciplinary contexts in Ethiopian higher education. Overall, the findings indicate that the HDP did not radically transform pedagogy and that teacher-centered instruction continues to dominate teaching and learning. Despite variations in institutional resources, geographical locations, or disciplinary contexts, ALMs were not commonly implemented. Drawing on the intensive analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, including over 150 faculty surveys, nearly 80 interviews with faculty (n=58), universities leaders (n=15), and policymakers (n=6), and 15 focus group discussions with 100 students, this research has identified barriers to the implementation of ALMs that exceed the often-cited factors such as large class sizes, lack of resources, overloaded curricula, lack of pedagogical knowledge, or a lack of faculty commitment. In addition to the previously documented barriers, this research has also identified the broader interconnected meso- and macro-level barriers related to the economy, politics, culture, and global/local dynamics that reflect the logic of coloniality through the continued influence of international donors using soft power (e.g., international aid, knowledge expertise, and international study tours). Combined, these findings suggest that the barriers to the implementation of ALMs in Ethiopia are rooted in systemic and complex power asymmetry between Ethiopia and the Global West/North, and therefore require not only technical assistance involving multiple sectors and stakeholders, but a radical reconfiguration of the modern/colonial logic that forms the foundation of the HDP and other borrowed education reforms.