Edward Vickers

Edward Vickers was born in England in 1971. He read Modern History at the University of Oxford (1989-92), and took his PhD in Education at the University of Hong (in 2000). Before coming to Kyushu University in 2012, he was Associate Professor at the University of London's Institute of Education (IOE; 2003-2012). At the IOE, he led the MA programme in Comparative Education (2004-8), and the Erasmus Mundus MA in Lifelong Learning (2005-2011). He has also been a visiting professor at Tohoku University (2011-12).

Between 1992 and 2003, Dr. Vickers lived and worked in China. He began his career as a high school teacher in Hong Kong, where he also wrote a highly successful series of secondary school English textbooks. He later worked as a 'foreign expert' in Beijing, writing and editing teaching materials for the People's Education Press (China's main publisher of school textbooks).

Dr. Vickers researches the history and politics of education in modern and contemporary East Asia, especially in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. He is particularly interested in the relationship between education, identity politics and nationalism. His books (all published by Routledge) include In Search of An Identity: the politics of History as a school subject in Hong Kong, 1960s-2003; History Education and National Identity in East Asia (with Alisa Jones); Imagining Japan in Post-war East Asia: identity politics, schooling and popular culture (with Paul Morris and Naoko Shimazu); and Constructing Modern Asian Citizenship (with Krishna Kumar). He is currently working on a history of China's education system since the 1970s.