Introduction: It Changes Everything

Abstract

This chapter outlines the line of narration of the monograph. The chapter presents how the monograph contributes to research on international higher education reform by offering an empirical and theoretical account of the mode of governance that characterizes the Bologna Process and by demonstrating how the reform materializes and is translated in everyday working life. The monograph explores the Bologna Process through a multisited policy ethnography that consists of an ethnographic examination and analysis of (a) the policy ontology of the Bologna Process: the ‘quality’ or the condition and constitution of the ways in which the Bologna Process works, (b) the material-affective infrastructure of the policy ontology: the follow-up mechanisms, including specific tools and instruments through which the Bologna mode of governance is set in motion, and (c) professors and managers’ translations of the Bologna Process, including the ways in which the reform processes alter professional working life in higher education organizations.