Almost ten years ago, an informal network of international researchers in vocational and adult education engaged in a common project on global transformations of work and learning. A series of case studies from various countries gave evidence to parallel transformations in the complex relations of learning and work and the politics of working life (Seddon, Henriksson & Niemeyer 2010). It was the beginning of an ongoing search about the transforming role of education, teaching and learning in a liquid modernity (Bauman, 2000). Subsequent projects and publications focused on travelling education politics, the identification of spaces for education and spaces for individual agency in a spreading (adult) education field. Starting with a self-reflexive retrospective on this series of common transnational research projects the paper provides an exemplary insight in the wider project of knowledge-building as one aspect of building Europe as an education space (Lawn 2013). With reference to historical sociology of knowledge-building it can be illustrated how an epistemological territory was identified and claimed as research field. A predominant focus on governance strategies and policy instruments provided a convenient access to the field, but at the same time supported a specific perspective on Europeanisation and globalisation. The relation of individual and society, the social construction of European subjects (Niemeyer 2017) and education spaces however, as a core question of educational knowledge building still remains open (Schlögel 2013). I will argue that the charting of the research field along the opposing categories of Europe and member states, political generalisation and cultural specifities, pushes other categories of differentiation, like race, class, ethnicity, gender, generation, disciplines, etc. in the background and tends to underestimate the complexities of transnational research practice. How limited is the explanatory potential of metaphors of space and binary models and metaphors of theory?

Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid Modernity. Cambridge, Polity. Lawn, M. (2013). The internationalisation of education data: Exhibitions, tests, standards and associations. In: Lawn, M. (ed) The Rise of Data in Education Systems: Collection, Visualization and Uses. Oxford: Symposium Books, pp.11–26. Newman, S., Niemeyer, B., Seddon, T. & Devos, A. (2014). Globalisation, Societies and Education. Special Issue: Educational Work: The Educational Boundary Politics of Making ‚Citizens‘., London: Routledge, Vol. 12/3. Seddon, T., Henriksson, L. & Niemeyer, B. (2010). Learning and work and the politics of working life: Global transformations and collective identities in teaching, nursing and social work, London: Routledge, 2010 Schlögel, Karl (2013), Grenzland Europa: Unterwegs auf einem neuen Kontinent. München: Hanser.