29th of September, 2021
Seminar organizers: Katja Brøgger, Mette Buchardt
Keynote Speaker: Thomas S. Popkewitz
Presentations by: Viktoria Boretska, Katja Brøgger, John Krejsler and Mette Buchardt
The international seminar accomodated the discussion "Education Politics and Hidden Cold War Schemes. The past in the present educational directions international and nationally" through Popkewitz keynote and Boretska's, Brøgger's, Krejsler's and Buchardt's presentations.
Thomas Popkwetiz's lecture, titled "How Contemporary Educational Sciences Became Reasonable: The Transnational Sciences Related in Education In The Post War World Two Years" , focused on the transnational infrastructures related to the educational sciences in the two decades post war. The presentation considered the systems of reason that codified and calculated experience in which society and population were viewed as "data" of experimental laboratories (R&D).
Popkewitz lecture was followed by Viktoria Boretska's presentation on"The imperative of scientificity in education during the times of the Soviet state reconstructions". Boretska' s presentation explored how the holy grail of science and scientific method has become an imperative for the field of education throughout those periods of change.
Following Boretska, Katja Brøgger's presentation, "Post-Cold-War governance arrangements in Europe: Bypassing or asserting the nation in higher education policy?", explored how the current virulent calls for a return to the homogenous Nation may be turning the tables with regards to the prospects and promises of European integration through education.
John Krejsler's presentation, "Transnational European Mobilization as a Producer of Global Effects: Exploring the outbound performative effects of European education policy" considered the genealogy of how a transnational truth regime is produced in a Northern region that produces global impact, and is, simultaneously, a projection of 'Western soft power' in a Cold War and post-Cold War context.
At last, Mette Buchardt's presentation, "The Education Politics of ‘Real Life’ and the Quest for Social Usefulness. Cold War Reform Processes in the Nordic Welfare-Nation-States in past and present". explained this history, focusing on how national Protestantism became part of social engineering efforts in the Cold War education reform processes during the 1950s-1960s, aiming at replacing “dannelse” with a focus on “real life” in the crafting of welfare-state education policies .
