Fazal Rizvi

Keynote Abstract

'Re-thinking Issues of Diversity within the Context of an Emergent Transnationalism'

Diversity, it has been widely noted, cannot be read against a universal set of criteria, and that the moral claims surrounding diversity are contextually specific. Traditionally these claims have been nationally defined. In this paper, I will argue that this approach to thinking about diversity is no longer sufficient, and that while the national context still remains pertinent, in the era of globalization, it has become transformed by the emerging processes of transnationalism. Using a number of narratives, I will suggest that the multiple ways in which people now experience, interpret, negotiate and work with diversity are affected by factors that are deeply shaped by the emerging patterns of global mobility and interconnectivity. This recognition has major implications for educational research, requiring new conceptual resources that enable us to ‘read’ diversity as a product of complex interactions between national articulations and their re-constitution by transnational processes.

Biography 

Currently, in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US, Fazal has worked in a number of countries, including several senior university research and administrative posts in Australia. In 1996, he was the President of Australian Association of Research in Education. From 2006-2008, he was the international expert for education on UK’s Research Assessment Exercise 2008. Trained as a philosopher of education at Kings College University of London, his research interests [related to our ECER topic] include: globalization and education policy, postcolonial theories of education, and issues of identity and culture in transnational contexts. His recently published books include: a text co-authored with Bob Lingard, Globalizing Education Policy (Routledge 2010) and a volume co-edited with Tom Popkewtiz, Globalization and the Study of Education (Wiley-Blackwell 2009). At the University of Illinois he directs its program in Global Studies in Education.