Tomasz Szkudlarek

Professor in EDUCATION
ORCID 0000-0001-9308-7106

Institute of Education
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Gdańsk
Bażyńskiego 4
80-309 Gdańsk POLAND

  • Head of the Division of Philosophy of Education and Cultural Studies at Institute of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Gdansk
Tomasz Szkudlarek obtained his PhD in education in 1990. His dissertation concerned philosophical conceptions of truth implied in curriculum theories. In 1990 – 1991 he was a visiting scholar at Miami University, Ohio, USA (grant from The Kosciuszko Foundation in New York), where he worked at the Centre for Education and Cultural Studies directed by Henry Giroux. His habilitation was obtained in 1993 at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań on the basis of his dissertation on conceptions of knowledge and freedom in American postmodern pedagogies (two books written during his work in the USA). He became full professor at Institute of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences of University of Gdańsk, in 2000.

He was deputy director for Research and International Co-operation, and then director of the Institute of Education at the same university in the years 1993—2002. From 2006 to 2017 he was Director of the Doctoral Programme in Education and Political Science at the Faculty of Social Sciences of University of Gdańsk. He also collaborated with other academic institutions. In Poland, he was visiting professor at he Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk (where he now now teaches social theory to doctoral students together with his wife, prof. Maria Mendel) and at the University of Lower Silesia (Dolnośląska Szkoła Wyższa) in Wrocław where he also taught in a doctoral programme. Internationally, he was also visiting professor at Linkoping University and at University West in Sweden, as well as taught short courses in doctoral programmes or held invited lectures at universities in the UK (UCL London), Sweden (Uppsala, Goeteborg), Norway (Oslo), and many others.

Szkudlarek is the author, editor or co-author of 15 books and over 100 journal papers and book chapters. His publications are diverse in terms of disciplinary fields and range from critical pedagogy, cultural studies, theory of identity, philosophy of education and political theory, to media studies and semiotics. His recent interests focus on the intersection of education and politics, and on the rhetorical construction of identity in educational and political discourse in particular. His research has been supported by numerous grants he received from national institutions (NCN – National Science Center; MniSzW – Ministry of Science and Higher Education; KBN – Committee for Scientific Research), as well as from international funders (The Kosciuszko Foundation, USA, and European Commission 6th Framework Programme).

Teaching Interests
  • Philosophy and theory of education
  • Discourse theory and discourse analysis
  • Politics, culture and education
Research Interests
  • Rhetorical construction of society and educational rhetorics
  • Contemporary philosophies of education
  • Discourse, identity and subjectivity
Selected Publications

Full list of publications and citations data are available at:

https://scholar.google.pl/citations?hl=pl&user=zwdvKG4AAAAJ&view_op=list_works

Books

– On the Politics of Educational Theory. Rhetoric, theoretical ambiguity, and the construction of society. London and New York: Routledge, 2017

– Education and the Political: New Theoretical Articulations (editor and co-author). Rotterdam, Boston, Taipei: Sense Publishers, 2013.

The Problem of Freedom in Postmodern Education. London, Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey 1993

Wiedza i wolność w pedagogice amerykańskiego postmodernizmu [Knowledge and Freedom in the Pedagogies of American Postmodernity]. Kraków: Impuls 2000

Media. Szkic z filozofii i pedagogiki dysatansu [Media. An Essay in Pedagogy and Philosophy of Distance]. Kraków: Impuls, 2009.

Kultura, tożsamość i edukacja. Migotanie znaczeń [Culture, Identity and Education. The Flickering Meanings], with Zbyszko Melosik. Lraków: Impuls 1998. Also translated into Russian as КУЛЬТУРА, ИДЕНТИЧНОСТЬ И ОБРАЗОВАНИЕ: МЕРЦАНИЕ ЗНАЧЕНИЙ and published by Tomsk University Press in 2015.

Różnica, tożsamość, edukacja. Szkice z pogranicza [Difference, Identity and Education. Essays from the Border]. Editor and co-author. Kraków: Impuls 1995

Dyskursywna konstrukcja podmiotu. Przyczynek do rekonstrukcji pedagogiki kultury [The discursive construction of subjectivity. Towards the reconstruction of pedagogy of culture], co-author. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2012.

Journal papers and book chapters

Carusi, F. Tony, and Tomasz Szkudlarek. 2020. “Education Is Society … and There Is No Society: The Ontological Turn of Education.” Policy Futures in Education, no. online first: 1–15. doi:10.1177/1478210320933018.

Szkudlarek, Tomasz, and Piotr Zamojski. 2020. “Education and Ignorance: Between the Noun of Knowledge and the Verb of Thinking.” Studies in Philosophy and Education, Studies in Philosophy and Education, , no. online first: 1–14. doi:10.1007/s11217-020-09718-9.

Szkudlarek, Tomasz. 2019. “Postulational Rhetoric and Presumptive Tautologies: The Genre of the Pedagogical, Negativity, and the Political.” Studies in Philosophy and Education, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 38 (4): 427–37. doi:10.1007/s11217-018-9621-8.

– Punk theory: The future of thinking in the time of no future. Research in Education 97, 1, 2017, pp 49-55. DOI 10.1177/0034523717714070

– Laclau’s Ontological Rhetoric, Universality, and Collective Identity: A Lesson for Cosmopolitan Education. In: Papastephanou M. (eds) Cosmopolitanism: Educational, Philosophical and Historical Perspectives. Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education, vol 9. Springer, Cham, 2016.

– Future perfect? Conflict and agency in higher education reform in Poland (co-author, with Łukasz Stankiewicz). International Journal for Academic Development 19, 1, 2014; pp. 37-49.

DOI 10.1080/1360144X.2013.848357.

– The excess of theory : on the functions of educational theory in apparent reality. In Biesta Gert, Edwards Richard, Allan Julie (eds.): Making a difference in theory : the theory question in education and the education question in theory, Routledge, 2014, pp. 151-166.

– On Nations and Children: Rousseau, Poland and European Identity. Studies in Philosophy and Education ,vol.24, No.1, 2005; pp.19-38.

– Empty signifiers, education and politics . Studies in Philosophy and Education vol. 26, no.3. 2007, pp. 237-252

– Semiotics of identity: education and politics. Studies in Philosophy and Education vol. 30 , no. 2, 2011, pp. 113-125.

– Meaning and Power. Education as Political Semiosis. In: Inna Semetsky (ed.), Semiotics Education Experience. Rotterdam / Boston / Taipei, SENSE Publishers 2010, pp.259 – 276

–  Inner university, knowledge workers and liminality. In Pat Thompson, Melanie Walker (eds.), The Routledge Doctoral Student’s Companion. Getting to Grips with Research in Education and Social Sciences. London: Routledge 2010

– Educational theory, displacement and hegemony. International Journal of Applied Semiotics vol.4, no.1, 2005.

– Students as journeymen between cultures of higher education and work: A comparative European project on the transition from higher education to working life (co-author). Higher Education in Europe Vol.32, No.4, 2007, 305-316.