V-charged: powering up the world-class university as a global actor

A great deal has been written about the rise of the world-class university and global university rankings over the past two decades. Much of this work focuses on either the efficacy of the indicators used to measure world classness or on the purposes they serve regarding student choice in an international market. However, less attention has been paid to the ways in which spatial power, particularly the politics of sight and size, brings into view and makes visible and actionable new sets of socio-spatial relations between entities. In this paper, I draw on a spatial vocabulary of sight, vision, visibility, verticality, volume and vertigo. Taken together, these modalities of space ‘V-Charge’ the reimagining, recalibrating and remaking of universities as a global enterprise.