Professor, History Department
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 Presenting a paper on "Liberal Education for Civic Deliberation and Human Flourishing" at a conference in Santa Clara, Cuba (February 2012) |
 Teaching a Course on the Philosophy of Education in Rome, Italy (May 2011) |
Biography
Noah W. Sobe is Professor of Modern European History in the College of Arts and Sciences at Loyola University Chicago. He earned a master’s degree in International and Comparative Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a minor in Education Policy Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has been a faculty member at Loyola since 2004, and has served as chair of the Cultural and Educational Policy Studies program, director of the Center for Comparative Education, and chair of Loyola’s University Senate.
His scholarship crosses the fields of comparative and international education and the history of education, to which he brings a particular interest in schools as sites of cultural production. His research on the transnational circulation of educational policies and practices has been published in journals such as the Harvard Education Review, Educational Theory, the Comparative Education Review, and Paedagogica Historica. His scholarship includes work in the history of childhood and the history of emotions and has treated topics such as attentiveness and boredom in school, world’s fairs and international expositions, international curriculum history, educational accountability, data governance, and Balkan and East/Central European educational history.
From 2019-2022, while on a leave from his academic position, Professor Sobe worked as Senior Project Officer at UNESCO on the Future of Learning and Innovation team where he helped to lead the research and drafting of the UNESCO flagship report Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education. Following in the footsteps of the Delors (1996) and Faure (1972) reports this once-a-generation visioning and foresight surveyed the contemporary global landscape and put forth an educational vision for flourishing futures for humanity and the living planet Earth.
Professor Sobe has served on the Executive Committee of the International Standing Conference on the History (ISCHE), is a Past-President of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) and is currently serving a term (2024-2027) as a member of the CIES Executive Committee and the Society's official Historian. From 2010 to 2023 he served as co-Editor of the journal European Education, affiliated with the Comparative Education Society of Europe (CESE). He serves on multiple editorial boards, has been a Salzburg Global Fellow and a Woodrow Wilson Center scholar.
Prior to becoming a professor, he taught middle school in Krakow, Poland and in New York City. He serves on the Boards of The Village Project and the Game of Village, organizations that promote democratic civic education, and has extensive experience running teacher professional development workshops. A frequent speaker at global education events, Professor Sobe has given invited talks in Brazil, Canada, China, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Vietnam, and across the United States.
