This special issue of LTHE (edited together with Kay Sanderson of Middlesex University, Dubai) focuses on cultural aspects of learning and teaching in Gulf higher education contexts. As higher education throughout the world has become increasingly globalized, culture has become noticeable in many more ways and in many more contexts than before (Palfreyman, 2007). In the Gulf and elsewhere, ideas of 'local culture' or 'Western culture' are often invoked by teachers and others in educational institutions in the Gulf; and it is worth considering what these terms mean, firstly to practitioners who use them, secondly in the context of recent scholarship and thirdly in the context of the Gulf region as part of the global scene in the early twenty-first century. In everyday discourse, 'culture' is often identified (sometimes almost as a synonym) with nationality "“ e.g. 'American culture', 'Emirati culture' "“ with the suggestion that anyone born in a particular country is 'programmed' to behave in a particular way. A broader definition of culture is: