Understanding Asymmetry as a Structural Condition in International Cooperation and Doctoral Education

Internationalization has become a central feature of contemporary higher education, yet collaborations and doctoral training across institutional and cultural contexts often involve persistent asymmetries. While these are frequently interpreted as temporary coordination problems or individual adaptation challenges, less attention has been paid to how asymmetry is structurally produced and managed within everyday academic practice. This paper examines asymmetry as a structural condition shaping international academic cooperation and doctoral supervision. The study adopts a conceptual and prac-tice-informed analytical approach based on two longitudinal situations at the University of Genoa (Italy): a capacity building partnership with a university in the Global South and the supervision of an international doctoral student within a biomedical research labor-atory. Based on literature on internationalization, supervision, and academic develop-ment, the analysis explores how asymmetries emerge and evolve in practice. Across both cases, asymmetry became visible through misaligned temporalities, uneven distributions of responsibility, and adjustment processes that enabled collaboration and supervision to continue despite unresolved structural tensions. Stabilization occurred primarily through the redistribution of academic labor rather than through convergence of expectations or practices. These dynamics gradually contributed to the normalization, and partial in-visibility, of asymmetry within everyday academic work. The paper argues that rec-ognizing asymmetry as a structural feature of international academic engagement can support more reflexive and negotiation-oriented approaches to collaboration and doctoral education.