With the rise of the knowledge society, international conflict has become increasingly concerned with information and intellectual property – highlighting the growing importance of knowledge as a tool to serve purposes ranging from maintaining colonial links or political ties to facilitating peace and promoting trade. For academia, this has placed issues of internationalization firmly in the spotlight of internal and external stakeholders.

Throughout this process, internationalization has been conceptualized differently across higher education institutions and contexts, with institutions integrating different international and intercultural dimensions into the purpose and functions of education. Internationalization ofcurriculum, research, and service continue to be some of the fundamental factors in higher education where best practices are adopted and contextualized into different educational systems for efficiency and increase in productivity. After several decades of implementation of varying internationalization practices and policies, there is no question that it has transformed higher education across different borders. A plethora of studies have examined how internationalization has built on local, national, and regional policies and practices to harness, complement, and harmonize local activities in institutions.

Recent developments have, however, upset the status quo and formed the basis of new directions for both the utilization of academia in international relations and the use of internationalization as a tool for academic development. The COVID-19 pandemic brought a shift in patterns of mobility and digitalization, whose long-term effects are still an open question, and geopolitical instability has brought concepts such as responsible internationalization into the forefront of political and academic discourse. Another recent development is the rise of neo-nationalism, driven by autocratic regimes with anti-immigrant policies and economic protectionism.

With the road ahead for the internationalization of academia being uncertain, it becomes even more important to understand where the road has led so far. To understand where we are going, we must know where we came from. The APIKS survey, which was carried out in 2018 before the massive upheavals of the pandemic and heightened international conflict came into full swing, provides the ideal material for this purpose. Therefore, this study uses data from the survey to examine how internationalization has contextualized higher education curricula, research, services, and professional development programs across different countries. The study employs a comparative research design to conduct single and cross-case analyses of how the concept of internationalization has been contextualized. Using descriptive and inferential statistics such as ANOVA and multiple regression, the study's results will provide insights into how internationalization is integrated across borders, contexts, and disciplines to help provide a holistic picture of the situation. The results will also help develop a conceptual framework for understanding the perceived strategies of integrating internationalization across different contexts and open further avenues to explore how these differences could help support effective, efficient integration of internationalization.