Academics have always travelled between universities and research groups to exchange and gain new knowledge as part of their profession. However, in recent decades, travelling has been linked to the term internationalisation and is often institutionalised as part of funding, hiring processes, and promotion requirements. Universities are increasingly profiling themselves on having international staff and they are putting efforts into attracting international staff as part of their internationalisation strategies. Those policies and strategies often associate internationalisation with issues of competiveness and quality. In this paper, we focus on how this type of internationalisation is given meaning at the level of academics. Based on qualitative interviews with ‘international’ academics in Denmark, we discuss how ‘the international’ is ascribed meaning and negotiated in the daily practice of being an academic. We unfold how international academics’ former experiences of teaching in other settings and universities are transformed and negotiated in new settings. Hence, we discuss how international academics negotiate what constitutes meaningful teaching in the context of internationalisation.