Education has a long history of being closely affiliated with authorities. Political and economic elites have taken a particular interest in education as the venue where mindsets and worldviews were formed. Throughout history, different stakeholders have emerged, and power structures have shifted. Some of the key agents in these processes have been the church and clerical authorities, princes and sovereigns, the builders of nation-states, various groups of professionals, international organizations, as well as private agents and interest groups. In the modern age, the principal actors in the educational arena have been the state, regional and local authorities.

In a new special issue of the Nordic Journal of Educational History, new research on the history of state and power relations in a local, national and transnational sense is presented. The issue is edited by Mette Buchardt and Maria Simonsen and contains key contributions from the Eighth Nordic Conference on the History of Education, which was held in Aalborg in May 2022.

The special issue is available open access: https://journals.ub.umu.se/index.php/njedh/issue/view/73