The research project Catholic Universities: Identity and Internationalization is a cooperative research project between the Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) at Boston College (BC), the Center for Research on Educational Policy and Practice (CEPPE) at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC Chile), and the Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation (CHEI) at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (UCSC). The three universities represent three of the types of Catholic universities and colleges: independent (UCSC), sponsored religious (BC), and pontifical (UCC).

The goal of the research project was to explore the relationship between Catholic identity and mission and internationalization in Catholic universities of different types and located in different contexts. Guiding questions were: What is the rationale for internationalization at Catholic universities? Is it mostly financial, social, academic, or identity driven? Should students’ study abroad experience have a Catholic identity and mission component to it? How do Catholic institutions cooperate with other institutions? Is there an identity-based strategy behind the choice of partners? What is the influence of context? What is the role of associations of Catholic universities?

The study is financially supported through two grants from the Luksic Fund, a fund of the Chilean Luksic family providing grants to stimulate cooperation between the PUC de Chile, Boston College, and University of Notre Dame, also in the United States. The first grant made it possible to do a pilot study between the three universities. This resulted in a first publication (Bernasconi et al., 2017).

The pilot project laid the groundwork for the development of a larger research project, focused on comparative examination of internationalization in the Catholic higher education context, which is funded by a second grant from the Luksic Fund. This study involves sixteen case studies from Latin America (five), the United States (one), the Asia–Pacific (three), and Europe (seven). This book is the result from that broader study and includes, in addition to the sixteen institutional case study contributions, chapters on regional perspectives on Catholic higher education as well as more specifically Jesuit higher education and internationalization in the United States, Latin America, the Asia–Pacific region, and Europe. It also includes a contribution on the global network of La Salle Universities, as an example of an international association of Catholic universities. In the first chapter of this study, Fiona Hunter and Michael James introduce the theme of Catholic identity and internationalization. The study starts with a summary of key themes and findings by the editors and two graduate students at Boston College, Tessa DeLaquil and Kelber Tozini, in which the results of the study are summarized and analyzed, and recommendations are formulated on how Catholic institutions of higher education can strengthen the relationship between their identity and their internationalization strategy.

Draft case studies were prepared and presented for discussion at a seminar at the PUC, November 7–8, 2017. That seminar took place in conjunction with, and with a half day of overlap with the annual meeting on international education, November 8–10, 2017, at Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago de Chile, cosponsored by the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) International Education Conference and the Asociación de Universidades Confiadas a la Compañía de Jesús en América Latina (AUSJAL). This provided a broad basis for discussion on the objectives and conclusions of the study. We are grateful to our colleagues Constanza Bauer Campos and Sebastian Kaufmann Salinas at Universidad Alberto Hurtado for this suggestion and their support in the realization.

Not every piece of data was available for all institutions included in the study. The case study reports, accordingly, explore the issue of interest from slightly different angles and with varied sources of evidence. Nonetheless, certain common areas and trends stand out from the materials and findings presented in the following chapters. In the introduction to our pilot study we made reference to these trends. In our summary, we elaborate further on them, based on the larger pool of case studies in this study.

We have to acknowledge certain limitations in the realization of our study. Africa and the Middle East are not presented as regions or with case studies. Several attempts were made but without success. Given the increasing role of Catholic and other faith-based institutions of higher education in those regions, further study on these regions is recommended. Another limitation is the presence of only one American university and the absence of case studies from Canada and India. Also here, our efforts were in vain. It has, however, been possible to write two broader chapters on Catholic and Jesuit higher education in the United States.

We would like to thank the Luksic Fund for its generous support to this study, which has allowed us to realize this study, fund meetings between authors and editors, and edit the two publications resulting from the study. We like to thank the authors and their institutions for their contribution to this study, and Hélène Bernot Ullerö, Liz Reisberg, and in particular Boston College graduate students Tessa DeLaquil and Kelber Tozini, for their support in the final editing of the book.