11 May, 13.15–15.00 . For a zoom link, contact johan.ostling@hist.lu.se

Chelsea Rodriguez (Groningen) & Moa Lindqvist (Uppsala)

(Time zone: CET/CEST)

The history of education is a burgeoning field of historical inquiry. Since knowledge lies at the heart of institutional and non-institutional education, we believe that historians of knowledge and education have much to learn from each other. On May 11, the history of knowledge seminar invites two doctoral students, Moa Lindqvist and Chelsea Rodriguez, to present their research projects. The presentations will be followed by an open discussion regarding the possibilities of cross-disciplinary historical research, framing knowledge in educational research as an object of inquiry or a theoretical perspective.

The freedom and autonomy
of higher education in Sweden 1945–2020

Moa Lindqvist
Ph.D. student in Sociology of education, Uppsala University

What role has the academic ideals of freedom and autonomy played in the history of the Swedish higher education policy debate? In my dissertation project, I focus on disagreements between (and within) higher education institutions, political parties, and external actors, regarding the autonomy and freedom of higher education. The disagreements are visible in official reports of government investigations, referral responses, debate articles, and propositions. By combining perspectives from rhetoric and sociology, I will highlight discursive changes in the field in relation to the actors’ positions. My aim is both to understand the renegotiation of the ideals’ meanings, and what types of actors have been central, and marginal, in the higher education policy debate.

All the (School) news that’s fit to print:

A reflection on the history of education journalism and knowledge production in the New York Times

Chelsea Rodriguez

Ph.D. student, History and Philosophy of Education, University of Groningen

This presentation will reflect upon how the History of Education and the History of Knowledge intertwine within a broader PhD project on the history of education journalism in the United States. The project, “‘All the (school) news that’s fit to print’: a history of postwar education news coverage in the New York Times”, presents an overview of how the New York Times, as a unique historical actor, produced knowledge about education for its readership between 1950 and 1990. As will be discussed, methods and theories from the History of Knowledge can offer new lenses through which complex phenomena in the history of American education can be better understood, such as: the circulation of educational concepts in the public sphere; the form and constitution of education news as a body of knowledge; and, the journalistic practices of education writers and editors which have created and legitimized certain frames of education during the Cold War and amidst the rise of Neoliberal education reforms.

Photo by Orfeas Green on Unsplash