Professor, History Department
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Publications
I work on the history of education and on futures of education. My current scholarship looks at ways we might be able to transform education so that knowledge and learning can help us build sustainable futures for humanity and the living planet earth. Recent work includes:
- N.W. Sobe (2023) "Uncertainty as Ignorance? Governing Futures of Education" ECNU Review of Education, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20965311231189518
- N.W. Sobe (2023) "What if children are not the future? How to support educational possibility?" Possibility Studies & Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/27538699231168296
- N.W. Sobe (2023) "Anticipating education futures for an improved world" Response to CIES 2023 Conference, https://cies2023.org/written-responses/anticipating-education-futures-for-an-improved-world/
- N. W. Sobe (2022) “The Future and the Past are Unevenly Distributed: COVID’s Educational Disruptions and UNESCO’s Global Reports on Education," Paedagogica Historica, Vol. 58, No. 5 https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2022.2112244
My work as a comparative education researcher and historian of education coheres around an interest in studying the trans-national circulation of education policies and practices. I am particularly interested in the ways that schools function as contested sites of cultural production and not only (or simply) as sites of social reproduction. In studying the circulation of education policies and practices I have done work that focuses on particular geographic regions (primarily Europe and North America); work that takes up particular educational issues (e.g. big data and algorithms, practices of accountability, conceptualizations of children's attentive capabilities, the history of emotions); as well as work that focuses on particular institutional forms and specific social and political settings (e.g. exhibits at international expositions and education reform in post-conflict settings).
My publications include archival and policy analysis empirical studies as well as conceptual and theoretical work, all of which seek to bring a global perspective to better understanding historical and contemporary shifts in education policy and practice. Complete CV downloadable here.
Full Publications List
BOOKS
J. McLeod, N.W. Sobe & T. Seddon (Editors) World Yearbook of Education 2018: Uneven Time-Spaces of Education – Historical Sociologies of Concepts, Methods and Practices (Routledge, 2018)
I. Silova, N. W. Sobe, A. Korzh, & S. Kovalchuk (Editors) Reimagining Utopias: Theory and Method for Educational Research in Post-Socialist Contexts (Boston and Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2017)
N. W. Sobe (Editor) American Post-Conflict Educational Reform: From the Spanish-American War to Iraq (New York: Palgrave, 2009)
N. W. Sobe, Provincializing the Worldly Citizen: Yugoslav Student and Teacher Travel and Slavic Cosmopolitanism in the Interwar Era (New York: Peter Lang, 2008)
JOURNAL ARTICLES
N.W. Sobe, (2023) "Uncertainty as Ignorance? Governing Futures of Education" ECNU Review of Education, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20965311231189518
N.W. Sobe, (2023) "What if children are not the future? How to support educational possibility?" Possibility Studies & Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/ 27538699231168296
N. W. Sobe, (2022) “The Future and the Past are Unevenly Distributed: COVID’s Educational Disruptions and UNESCO's Global Reports on Education," Paedagogica Historica, Vol. 58, No. 5 https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230. 2022.2112244
N. W. Sobe, "Problematizing Comparison in a Post-Exploration Age: Big Data, Educational Knowledge, and the Art of Criss-Crossing" Comparative Education Review, 62(3) August 2018. [Open Access]
N.W. Sobe, “Travelling Researchers, Colonial Difference: Comparative Education in an Age of Exploration,” Compare (2017) Vol. 47, No. 3, p. 332-343, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2016.1273760
N.W. Sobe, "All that is Global is not World Culture: Accountability Systems and Educational Apparatuses," Globalisation, Societies and Education (2015) Vol. 13, No. 1, p. 135-148 [Downloadable PDF Copy]
N. W. Sobe & D. Boven, "Nineteenth-Century World's Fairs as Accountability Systems: Scopic Systems, Audit Practices and Educational Data" Educational Policy Analysis Abstracts (EPAA) Vol 22, No. 118 (December, 2014). [Downloadable PDF Copy]
N. W. Sobe & J. Kowalczyk, "Exploding the Cube: Revisioning 'Context' in the Field of Comparative Education" Current Issues in Comparative Education 6 (December 2012), Vol 17, No. 1 (Winter 2013), p. 6-12. [Downloadable PDF Copy]
N. W. Sobe & J. Kowalczyk, "The Problem of Context in Comparative Education Research" Journal for Educational, Cultural and Psychological Studies [Rome, Italy] 6 (December 2012), p. 55-74 doi:10.7358/ecps-2012-006-sobe
N. W. Sobe, "Researching emotion and affect in the history of education" History of Education 2012, volume 41, nr 5, p. 689-695. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe & C. Ness, "Comparative History of Education: William Brickman and the Study of Educational Flows, Transfers, and Circulations" European Education 42 (2) Summer 2010, p. 57-66. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Concentration and Civilisation: Producing the Attentive Child in the Age of Enlightenment" Paedagogica Historica 46 (1 & 2) Feb.- April 2010, p. 149-160. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Rethinking 'Cosmpolitanism' as an Analytic for the Comparative Study of Globalization and Education" Current Issues in Comparative Education 12 (1), Fall 2009, p. 6-13. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Entrelaçamentos e troca cultural na História da Educação: mobilizando John Dewey no período entre guerras" ["Entanglements and Intercultural Exchange in the History of Education: Mobilizing John Dewey in the Interwar Era"] Revista Brasileira de História da Educação 21, Fall 2009, p. 12-37. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Educational Reconstruction 'By the Dawn's Early Light': Violent Political Conflict and American Overseas Education Reform," Harvard Educational Review 79 (1), Spring 2009, p. 123-131. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "An Historical Perspective on Coordinating Education Post-Conflict: Biopolitics, Governing at a Distance, and States of Exception" Current Issues in Comparative Education 9 (2), Summer 2007, p. 45-54. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "US Comparative Education Research on Yugoslav Education in the 1950s and 1960s" European Education 38 (4), Winter 2006/2007, p. 44-64. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Cultivating a 'Slavic modern': Yugoslav Beekeeping, Schooling and Travel in the 1920s and 1930s," Paedagogica Historica 41 (1 & 2), February 2005, p. 145-160. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Challenging the Gaze: The Subject of Attention and a 1915 Montessori Demonstration Classroom," Educational Theory 54 (3), July 2004, p. 281-297. [Downloadable PDF copy]
DISCUSSANT PIECES / COMMENTARIES
N.W. Sobe, (2023) "Anticipating education futures for an improved world" Response to CIES 2023 Conference, https://cies2023.org/written-responses/anticipating-education-futures-for-an-improved-world/
N. W. Sobe, "Imagining Educational Space and National Space" discussion of Robert Cowen "With the Exception of Switzerland... Thoughts about the Nation and Educational Research" International Journal for the Historiography of Education vol 4, no. 2 (2014) [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Textbooks, Schools, Memory and the Technologies of National Imaginaries" in James Williams (Ed.) Textbooks and the Imagination of the Nation, Volume 1 (New York, Palgrave, 2014), p. 313-318. [Downloadable PDF copy]
HANDBOOK CHAPTERS
N. W. Sobe, "Cosmopolitan Education" In Gerard Delanty (Ed.) Handbook of Cosmopolitan Studies (New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 268-76. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Transnational Governance" in Nancy Lesko and Susan Talburt (Eds.) Youth Studies: Keywords and Movements (New York: Routledge, 2011) [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe & M. G. Fischer, "Mobilities, Migration, Minorities and Education" in Andreas Kazamias and Robert Cowen (Eds.) International Handbook of Comparative Education (New York: Springer, 2009) p. 359-71. [Downloadable PDF copy]
BOOK CHAPTERS
N.W. Sobe, “The slowing global order: boredom and affect in criss-crossing comparative education research” in S. Carney & E. Klerides (Editors) Identities and Education: Comparative Perspectives in Times of Crisis (Bloomsbury, 2021), p. 163-177. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N.W. Sobe, “Illustrating American progressive education: The cover illustration of John Dewey’s 1899 School and Society” in H. Amsing, N. Bakker, M. van Essen and S. Parlevliet (Eds.) Images of education: Cultuuroverdracht in historisch perspectief (Uitgeverij Passage: Groningen, 2018), p. 141-154. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N.W. Sobe & J. Kowalczyk, “Context, Entanglement and Assemblage as Matters of Concern in Comparative Education Research.” in T. Seddon, J. Ozga & N. W. Sobe (Editors) World Yearbook of Education 2018: Time-Space and Mobility (Routledge, 2018), p. 197-204. [Downloadble PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, “Affect, Embodiment and Pedagogic Practice in Early-Twentieth-Century American Progressive Education: The School of Organic Education and John Dewey’s Schools of To-morrow,” in K. Berdelmann, B. Fristzsche, K. Rabenstein & J. Scholz (Eds.) Transformation von Schule, Unterricht und Profession: Erträge praxistheoretischer Forschung (Berlin: Schöningh, 2018), p. 167-184. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, “Boredom and Classroom Design: the Affective Economies of School Engagement.” in I. Grosvenor & L. Rasmussen (Eds.) Making Education: Governance by Design. (New York Springer, 2018), p. 157-182. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, “Fontes, Teoris, Escolarização e Infância: Afeto e Coproreidade nas Escolas Progressistas Norte-Americanas do Amanhã [Sources, Theory, Schooling, and Childhood: Affect and Embodiment in American Progressive Schools of To-Morrow]” L. A. Gomes Senna (Trans.) in J. G. Gondra, M.C.G. Machado, and R.H.S. Simoes (Eds.) História da Educação, Matrizes Interpretativas e Internacionalização (Vitória: EDUFES, 2017), p. 273-296
N. W. Sobe, "Comparative Education, Globalization and Teaching with/against the Nation-State" in Patty Kubow and Alison Blosser (Eds.) Teaching Comparative Education: Trends and Issues Informing Practice (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2016), p. 151-162. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N.W . Sobe, "Attention and Boredom in the 19th-Century American School: The 'Drudgery' of Learning and Teaching and the Common School Reform Movement" in Sabine Reh, Kathrin Berdelmann, and Jörg Dinkelaker, (Editors), Aufmerksamkeit Zur Geschichte, Theorie und Empirie eines pädagogischen Phänomens (Springer, 2015), p. 55-70. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N.W. Sobe, "Globalizing Perpetual Peace: Justice and Progress in the Fabrication of the Cosmopolitan Schoolchild" in Barry Franklin and Miguel Pereyra (Eds.) Systems of Reason and the Politics of Schooling (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 251-263. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Educational Data at Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century International Expositions: 'accomplished results' and 'instruments and apparatuses'" in Martin Lawn (Ed.) The Rise of Data in Education Systems: Collection, Visualisation and Use (London: Symposium Books, 2013) [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Entanglement and Transnationalism in the History of American Education" in Thomas S. Popkewitz (Ed.) Rethinking the History of Education: Transnational Perspectives on Its Questions, Methods and Knowledge (New York: Palgrave, 2013) p. 93-107. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Teacher Professionalization and the Globalization of Schooling" in Terri Seddon and John S. Levin (Eds.) Educators, Professionalism and Politics: Global Transitions, National Spaces and Professional Projects (World Yearbook of Education, 2013) (London: Routledge, 2013) p. 42-54. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Educational Accountability and Global Governmentality" in Gita Steiner-Khamsi and Florian Waldrow (Eds.) World Yearbook of Education, 2011: Policy Borrowing and Lending (London: Institute of Education, 2011) p. 80-94. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe & R. Timberlake, "Staying the (Post)Socialist Course: Global/Local Transformations and Cuban Education," I. Silova (Ed.) Post-Socialism is not Dead: (Re)Reading the Global in Comparative Education (Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing, 2011) p. 351-367.[Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe & N. D. Ortegón, "Scopic Systems, Pipes, Models and Transfers in the Global Circulation of Educational Knowledge and Practices," in T. Popkewitz and F. Rizvi (Eds.) Globalization and the Study of Education (New York: NSSE/Teachers College Press, 2009) p. 49-66.[Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe and C. Rackers, "Fashioning Writing Machines: Typewriting and Handwriting Exhibits at US World's Fairs 1893-1915" in Martin Lawn (Ed.) Modelling the Future Exhibitions and the Materiality of Education (London: Symposium Books, 2009), p. 87-105. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "American Philanthropy and Reconstruction in Europe after World War I: Bringing the West to Serbia" in N.W. Sobe (Ed.) American Post-Conflict Educational Reform: From the Spanish-American War to Iraq (New York: Palgrave, 2009), p. 75-104. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Attention and Spectatorship: Educational Exhibits at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco 1915" in Volker Barth (Ed.) Innovation and education at International Expositions (Paris: Intl. Bureau of Expositions/BIE, 2007), p. 95-116. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Embodied Knowledge and the Nation: The School Field Trip" in Irving Epstein (Ed.) Recapturing the Personal: Education, Embodied Knowledge and Comparative Inquiry (Greenwich, Connecticut: Information Age Publishing, 2006) p. 143-162. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Slavic Emotion and Vernacular Cosmopolitanism: Yugoslav Travels to Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and 1930s " in Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane P. Koenker (Eds.) Turizm: The Russian and East European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2006) p. 82-96. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "US Education Research and the Travels of Governance" in Jenny Ozga, Thomas Popkewitz and Terri Seddon (Eds.) World Yearbook of Education 2006: Education Research and Policy (London: Institute of Education, 2006) p. 33-42. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Balkanizing John Dewey" in Thomas Popkewitz (Ed.) Modernities, Inventing The Modern Self and Education: The Traveling of Pragmatism and John Dewey (New York: Palgrave, 2005) p. 135-152. [Downloadable PDF copy]
N. W. Sobe, "Travel, Social Science and the Making of Nations in Early 19th Century Comparative Education" In Marcelo Caruso and Heinz-Elmar Tenorth (Eds.), Internationalisation: Comparing Educational Systems and Semantics (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002) p. 141-166. [Downloadable PDF copy]
