Transnational mobility and the spaces of knowledge production: a comparison of different academic fields

Transnational movements of academics shape the production and dissemination of knowledge and thus the geographies of contemporary knowledge economies. In this paper, I investigate the complex relationship between knowledge, mobility and space by examining three key aspects of academic mobility to Germany in the period 1981 to 2000: first, global patterns of interaction, second, motivations to work in Germany for a limited period of time and, third, resulting publications and collaborations. The study is based on two sets of statistical data and a postal survey involving about 1200 respondents from 90 countries. I argue that transnational academic mobility and collaboration is not only shaped by political, socio-economic, cultural, intellectual and individual circumstances but also by varying geographies of different research practices that help to explain field-specific cultures of academic mobility and collaboration. Drawing upon an actor-network based understanding of both the natural and technical sciences and the arts and humanities, a three-dimensional matrix is developed that conceptualises varying spatial relations of scientific practice and interaction in different fields and at different stages of knowledge production.