Join us online or in person for a seminar with Dr Mati Keynes.

Education in Cultures of Redress

The period from the late-1980s to the present has been attributed many monikers—age of apology, politics of regret, the guilted age—each in their own way seeks to capture something of the ‘essence’ of a preoccupation with the past as a defining feature of global politics. There have been more than 40 truth commissions and 340 political apologies globally in that period. Redress has not been limited to post-conflict societies emerging from civil strife. It is also favoured in established democracies founded on large-scale abuses or characterised by colonial injustice.

This paper examines the place of education within cultures of redress. Educational reforms are one of many discursive mechanisms of the political terrain of redress. Specifically, I canvass four recent cases—Australia, Canada, Northern Ireland and South Africa—where education reform has been used as a mechanism for righting historical wrongs. I compare examples of policy, curriculum, textbook, and pedagogical reform, and their surrounding debates, as they have been directed to redress the past and support social change. I am interested broadly in how knowledge of historical injustice has been mediated through education in established democracies, including how understandings of history figure in changing modes of liberal self-understanding and citizen-formation.

​​11am, 22nd May

Burwood: C2.05.01
Waurn Ponds: IC2.108
Zoom: Click here.

Dr Mati Keynes is an historian of education. Their research investigates the ways that education contributes to justice, peace, and social transformation by repairing historical injustices and legacies of violence.