Network 17. Histories of Education in 2025 sadly has lost a dear member and Honorary Network 17 Convenor, Emerita Professor Dr. Joyce Goodman, who was a wonderful person and brilliant historian of education. Network 17 celebrated her life and work at its Network meeting and, with much-appreciated funding from EERA, also at its Network dinner to honour her founding role, lasting transformative input and never-ending curiosity and enthusiasm. Her encyclopedic knowledge aided by her unparalleled organisational skills grounded in advanced data management technology, and her fresh and daring approaches to the craft with particular attention to gender, girls and women's education, networks and internationalism, but above all her presence and social networking talent will be sorely missed.
Sadly, this year has also again seen a much-valued Convenor leave Network17’s team, namely: Mischa Grundig de Vazquez. He has found himself at least temporarily without a university position, but if he manages to get a new position, he will be encouraged to consider becoming a Convenor once again. Network 17 is grateful for all his work as a Convenor, in the form of paper contributions and similar scholarly inputs to the Network, but especially also for his LGBTQ+ representation as the first openly trans Network 17 Convenor and his initiative of launching a Network 17 newsletter. We hope he gets back in touch if he feels so inclined and able to, and we wish him all the very best in his future endeavours. In terms of this year’s ECER session,
Network 17 had a total number of 48 accepted submissions (of which 2 posters and 1 symposium), which is similar to previous years. The network did receive only one symposium submission, though, and as in the previous year exceptionally no workshop or round table submissions. We are therefore again very keen to receive submissions in different formats than the individual paper one for the next ECER session in Tampere, Finland – hopefully tailored well to the Network 17 Special Call or cutting across disciplines as cross-network events.
Some of the highlights of this year’s conference were the decoloniality-focused papers, whether they addressed colonial history in and of itself or threaded decolonial perspectives through their historical analysis of, say, gender and sexuality and education.
As in previous years, there was also again good engagement with, and positive feedback on, the NW17’s collaboratively drafted Special Call, with a symposium explicitly addressing the topic ‘temporalities’. Likewise, NW17’s sessions again alternated between formats (paper sessions and symposium).
With Network 17 having sustained its improved reviewing process, the quality of conference contributions overall was good, and critical feedback, if needed, was given in a kind and constructive manner, as per Network 17’s working culture. Network 17 continues to work on the cross-network collaborative book project it initiated to help commemorate EERA’s 30th and Network 17’s 20th joint anniversaries – having experienced some hurdles in terms maintaining pace, which have slowly been overcome. The book is still expected to get published in the EERA-supported transdisciplinary Springer book series, if with a one-year delay, by the first half of 2026 at the latest.