There seems to be a consensus that the production and transfer of knowledge is inextricably linked to different forms of international mobilities. As prime producers and transferors of knowledge, academics are obviously no exception to this rule, while their 'compulsion' to proximity/mobility seems to be further propelled by institutional discourses regarding the alleged virtues of 'internationalization'. While it is clear that the ensuing 'mobility expectations' are often hard to balance with family and work obligations at the individual level, the existing business travel literature has paid scant attention to the form and function of academics' mobilities in light of their personal characteristics. In an effort to do so, this paper analyzes a recent dataset that contains data on academic travel over a two-year period (2009-2010). The dataset brings together information on both international travel behavior and a host of individual characteristics (age, gender, position) of academics (N=4000) at Ghent University in Flanders. The results show that personal characteristics and the career stage of academics play a considerable role in selecting mobility strategies. Especially young, female academics with children have difficulties coping with the compulsion to mobility, which explains the major gender inequalities amongst lecturers and professors. These results are further contextualized by complementing them with in-depth interviews of frequent traveling academics (N=25), which are used to identify distinct mobility strategies and discuss the rationale behind them.

This article explores the obligations of presence behind work-related mobility for academics in internationalizing higher education systems. By further developing John Urry's concept of 'meetingness', the article reveals how academics depend on corporeal and virtual mobility to create and maintain a networked professional life outside their own institution, which is crucial in the context of changing work conditions. Our insights are drawn from original qualitative research (42 interviews) in a Flemish and Danish context. The data reveal obligations of presence associated with an interrelated mix of functionality, and the construction of dense and sparse social networks that together support career success and work at the frontiers of academic knowledge. Despite the now well-recognised costs of corporeal mobility, obligations of presence result in virtual and corporeal mobility coexisting, rather than the former substituting for the latter. Virtual mobility is mainly used when conflicting obligations of presence exist, and as a means of sustaining networks over time given the processual nature of meetingness, rather than as a means to reduce levels of corporeal mobility.