JOB TALK: Prof. Linda Herrera

This talk traces the methodological journey of a critical ethnographer working in the Middle East during nearly three decades of momentous internationalization and transformation. It begins inside public sector schools in the final years of the Cold War, continues in private schools during the era of privatization and market liberalization, and traverses into youth virtual spaces in the age of social media which gave rise to the Arab uprisings. A combination of policy shifts, economic hardships, immense technological advances, and geopolitical pressures has culminated in an undeniable crisis in schooling. At this moment of disruptions, how can an education for the future be constructed? What collective values and ideas should guide schooling for a new era? What lessons can we learn about future configurations of schooling from the vantage point of the Middle East, and from a global moment we can call “the age of social media”?

Linda Herrera is an educational researcher and social anthropologist with regional expertise in the Middle East and North Africa. She has worked in the areas of the politics of education, international development policy, youth cultural politics, and media studies. She is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and director of the Global Studies in Education program. Her books include Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet (2014), Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East (2014), and the co-edited volumes,  Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics of the Global South and North (2010), and Cultures of Arab Schooling: Critical Ethnographies from Egypt (2006).