Reformers, Activists, Intellectuals, and the Circulation of Knowledge

Barry J. Hake studied Political Science at the Universities of Bristol and Exeter, UK, and holds a PhD in Modern Dutch Studies from the University of Hull. He was a founding member of the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA) in 1991 and served as its secretary from 1991 to 2008. Kirsi Ahonen obtained her PhD from Tampere University, Finland. She has previously worked as a researcher at Tampere University and as an adult education coordinator at the University of Helsinki. She is co-convenor of the ESREA network History of Adult Education and Training in Europe.Christian H. Stifter studied history and philosophy and obtained his PhD from Vienna University. He is Director of the Austrian Archives for Adult Education, and editor of the journal 'Spurensuche', which specializes in the history of adult education and popular science.

Ultimately, «Reformers, Activists, Intellectuals, and the Circulation of Knowledge» is an important and rigorously argued contribution to the history of adult education in Europe. Its scholarship is anchored, its conceptual framing is strong without being doctrinaire, and its ethical seriousness—especially its willingness to engage the darker pedagogies of nationalism and exclusion—makes it a book that the field needs. It should be read not only by historians of adult education, but by anyone who wishes to understand adult learning as a force that can democratise, discipline, emancipate, domesticate, radicalise, or regress—depending on the social relations in which it is organised. (George K. Zarifis, in: Studies in the Education of Adults, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/02660830.2026.2652688)

• Contents - Preface - Introduction: Ideas, Movements, and Circulation of Knowledge - Barry J. Hake, Kirsi Ahonen, and Christian H. Stifter - From Social Enlightenment for the ‘Common Man’ to ‘Refresher Classes’: Development of ‘Extended Elementary Schools’ for (Young) Adults in the Netherlands, 1813–1848 - Barry J. Hake - Educating or Agitating? Educational Activities in the Finnish Workers’ Movement from the 1880s to the 1910s - Kirsi Ahonen - Adult Education through the Press: Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete (Newspaper for Ladies) 1895–1908 - Zeynep Alica - The Danish Home Economics Movement between Nation-State Formation and Women’s Citizenship at the Turn of the Twentieth Century - Annette Rasmussen and Karen E. Andreasen - Early Innovations in Professional Development for Adult Educators during the Weimar Republic in Germany - Francesca Baker - Social Change by Right-Wing Movements: The Ideas of Bruno Tanzmann, the Artamanen Movement, and the Volkshochschule Movement in Germany - Bernd Käpplinger - Teaching Democracy against the Anti-democratic Trend: Civic Education at the Deutsche Volkshochschule Brünn, Czechoslovakia, 1920–1938 - Simon Oehlers - The Stunted Development of Adult Education in Ireland: Case Study of University College Cork, 1911–1973 - Alan McCarthy - Notes on Contributors - ESREA and the History of Adult Education and Training in Europe Network