UW–Madison’s Thomas Popkewitz, a professor in the School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction, continues to share his scholarship with colleagues around the world. Popkewitz is an internationally recognized researcher with six honorary doctorates and an elected fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). His work focuses on the cultural politics of education knowledge and its comparative reason.
This past summer, Popkewitz gave keynote lectures and received honorary professorships in China, South Korea, and Brazil. On June 25, he delivered the opening keynote presentation, “International Teacher Education: A Search of a Global Knowledge that is Historical Bound,” at the Fourth International Symposium on Inclusive Education Development in Wuhan, China. During the visit, he was also appointed as an Honorary Professor at Central China Normal University.
On July 1, he was named an Honorary Distinguished Professor at Shanghai Normal University, where he also gave a lecture. Later that month, Popkewitz and Ji Huan Hwang presented the keynote, “Beyond Human Agency: Exploring AI’s Challenges and Potentiality in Internationalized Education through Posthumanism,” at the 25th International Conference on Education Research at Seoul National University. On July 14, he delivered a lecture titled, “The Activism of Science: Knowledge as Projections and Phantasmagram of the Future in the Present,” at the Korean Institute on Curriculum and Education (KICE).
In Brazil, Popkewitz delivered the keynote, “A History of the Present Teacher Education, Global Knowledge and Coloniality,” at the fifth National Doctoral School in Education Policy and Teaching Work Conference in Recife, Pernambuco. The Doctoral School is a nationally funded project for PhD students, who meet every two years.
Popkewitz also published two new works in 2025. With Wu Chushan and Zang Lingling, he co-authored an article, “Comparative Studies and Comparing: International Assessments and The Making Kinds of People,” in International and Comparative Education. He also contributed the chapter, “The Political of Diversity and Difference: Scenes of Projection, Making Kinds of People & Curriculum Knowledge,” in Anna Chronaki and Ayşe Yolcu’s co-edited volume, “Troubling Citizenship for Mathematics Education in Times of Globalization: Unfolding How Competencies and Spatial Contexts Enact the Citizen Subject,” published by Routledge.