Short presentation

My research explores the intersections between pedagogy, school life, education policy, and digital technologies. In my work, questions about how society meets new generations constitute a prism to make visible the assumptions, values, and power dynamics at play in the present: Does society exert too much or too little control over the time of children and young people? What do we consider essential to teach and learn today? How is the need for institutions such as kindergartens, schools, or youth education justified from a historical perspective? And when does someone or something become a problem when certain political goals and economic interests are invested in the education sector?

In education, society's relationship to itself as a force of power and authority is brought to the forefront: This is where we take responsibility for the existing and make it (im)possible to enter the world in new ways. How we, as a society, manage this responsibility is not set in stone but closely linked to changing historical, material, and social conditions. In short, it matters whether we educate with books or iPads, not because we are determined by our surroundings but because human possibilities for freedom are always shaped in interaction with the objects and relationships that frame the pedagogical encounter. This entails a focus on both the doors that are opened through contemporary education policies but, equally important, on the doors that are closed. In my research, I am particularly interested in how digital technologies and companies are involved in this dynamic today – for example, when global tech companies become involved in public education offerings, thereby maintaining specific ways of opening and closing the world for their participants.

I teach and supervise in the history of education, education policy, critical perspectives on educational technologies, critical pedagogy, school life, and ethnographic approaches to institutional research, feminist and posthumanist theory, post-qualitative methods, as well as comparative and international pedagogy.