This book critically and reflectively engages with the ‘Language Problem’ in the contemporary multilingual university. It paints a complex picture of the lived multilingual realities of teachers and students in universities across geographies such as Pakistan, Timor-Leste, South Korea, Bangladesh, Somaliland, Afghanistan, Fiji, Colombia, and the UK (including Northern Ireland) and focuses on three overall analytic themes: language and colonial epistemologies, language policies and practices, and language and research.

Globalisation, global knowledge economy, and neoliberal governance has significantly impacted higher education by elevating colonial languages, particularly English, to a global academic lingua franca. Universities now collaborate and compete globally, with English emerging as the dominant language for education and research. The imposition, or uncritical adoption, of English poses profound political, cultural, and epistemic challenges for those who have to use the language in everyday university administration, research, and teaching and also intertwines with issues of race, gender, coloniality, and social class. This volume addresses this as higher education’s multifaceted Language Problem which requires interdisciplinary collaboration and critical debate, and ultimately aims towards understanding multilingualism in higher education across both the Global North and South.

The contributions to this book continue to remind us of the coloniality of language and of the linguistic stratification that governs epistemological structures and power relations in the academy. It will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and practitioners of higher education, applied linguistics, education policy and politics, and sociology of education. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Teaching in Higher Education.

Ibrar Bhatt is Senior Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, Education & Social Work at Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland, UK). His research interests encompass literacy studies, higher education, and digitalisation. His prior work includes A Semiotics of Muslimness in China (sole-authored), The Epistemology of Deceit (co-edited), Academics Writing: The Dynamics of Knowledge Creation (co-authored); Assignments as Controversies: Digital Literacy & Writing in Classroom Practice (sole-authored), as well as many published research articles on similar subjects. He is founder and convener of the Multilingual University Network of the Society for Research into Higher Education, Executive Editor for the journal Teaching in Higher Education: Critical Perspectives, and on the Editorial Board for the journal Postdigital Science & Education.

Khawla Badwan is Reader in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK. Her research expertise includes language education, language and social justice, intercultural communication, literacy debates and reimagining sustainability discourses in education. She is the author of ‘Language in a Globalised World: Social Justice Perspectives on Mobility and Contact’ (2021).

Mbulungeni Madiba is Professor of Multilingual Education and Dean of Education at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His main research interests are language planning and policy, multilingual education, and translanguaging.