Towards a Sociology of Third Culture Universities: Latourian Cosmopolitics in Transnational Higher Education

Sino-British Higher Education (HE) partnership creates a ‘joint’ venture university. This article proposes Third Culture Universities (TCUs), drawing on Bruno Latour’s ‘cosmopolitical networks’ and a postmodern lens we argue that these ventures reflect neither Chineseness nor Britishness. Alternatively, they shift transactional agendas from traditional paradigms to foster hybrid educational communities. Localised curricula, co-governance structures, and metacultural leadership strategies emerge that are unique in TCUs, featuring non-Western and non-Eastern ontologies. Consequently, actors renegotiate multicultural philosophies, translingual pedagogies, and institutionalised practices moment-by-moment. Therefore, we position TCUs as dynamic spaces where different paradigms are co-constructed through network reassembly. Localised human and nonhuman actors, therefore, reconfigure partnerships to suit their own interpretation of learning. In doing so, they reassemble networks to privilege their own economic pursuits and epistemic equity. By deconstructing cosmopolitical potentials and tensions, this article aims to move us towards understanding there is little ‘joint’ about ventures not merely international, rather intercultural.