Some have suggested that in England the field of curriculum studies came to end with the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988. While noting would have prevented scholars from continued engagement with questions about the what, how and why of (school) education, there is at the very least a remarkable coincidence between the rise of national curricula and the transformation of educational research away from the 'traditional' curricular questions towards, on the one hand, a much more macro analysis of the social and political dimensions of schooling through the lenses of sociology and cultural studies and, on the other hand, a much more micro analysis of the interactions between teaching and learning and the relationship between educational inputs and outcomes. The rise of new approaches to curriculum policy and practice may well provide a different context for curriculum scholarship that could not only reinvigorate forms of curriculum studies that have become marginalised over the past decades, but that may also stimulate new forms of curriculum scholarship. In this presentation, I reflect on these wider transformations in educational research and curriculum studies, in order to highlight trends and patterns and to ask questions about the future of curriculum studies.