A cosmopolitan intellectual: the trajectories of Noah Sobe in (the history of) education

Abstract

Full Professor of Cultural and Educational Policy Studies in the School of Education at Loyola University Chicago (USA), Noah W. Sobe specializes in the history of education, and in comparative and international education. His researches examine the global circulation of educational policies and practices with particular emphasis on the ways in which schools work as loci of resistance to the cultural impositions upon individuals, peoples, societies, and worlds. He is also interested in research methodologies in comparative education, investigating specifically how notions such as those of context, nation, transnational and global/globalization can be reconceptualized. Also, he dedicates himself to the history of affect and emotion in education, with focus on the history of boredom in school. His formation and access to the educational arena, as well as his theoretical and methodological choices are examined in this interview, which also discusses his academic connections to Brazilian researchers associated to Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), to the School of Education and Institute of Brazilian Studies of the University of São Paulo, and explores his current attributions as Senior Project Officer in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Education Research and Foresight program, part of the Futures of Education: Learning to Become initiative. The reflection also covers the effects of COVID-19 on the international educational scene. As a whole, this dialogue offers the readers a stimulating and contemporary arch of problematizations, among which the disturbing statement made by Noah Sobe that “future is a cultural fact”.