Makeup, Mandate and Impact of International Councils at the Universities Participating in the Russian Academic Excellence Project: The Case of Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University

The thesis addresses such lesser-studied phenomenon as an International Advisory Council (IAC), formed to advise senior university leadership when as it embarks on the road to global competitiveness. Russian Academic Excellence Project, or 5 top 100 Project, as it is also known, all but dictates its participating institutions to create such a structure of governance, which raises the issue of the actual involvement of an IAC into the university governance process and of the real value of IAC’s recommendations. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the phenomenon of IAC using a concrete example of a university participating in the Russian Academic Excellence Project. Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, which joined the Project in 2015 and established its IAC in 2016, proves to be an interesting case of an initial fall and a subsequent rise of the IAC in a given institution. The case study details the logic behind IAC creation in 2016 and its transformation by 2020; shows how the IAC is integrated in the system of university governance; relates the experience of a concrete IAC to the general Russian context of creating and running such advisory bodies. The study bears both academic and practical relevance, since more Russian universities will be thinking of establishing their own IACs as the Excellence Project re-launches in 2020, so their leadership could use an account of both best and not-so-best practices to relate to when designing their own internationalized governance structures. Keywords: internationalization of governance, stakeholders, university givernance, International Advisory Council, Russian Academic Excellence Project