’Requiem for Comparative Education?’
Jeremy Rappleye is Professor of Comparative Education and Director of the Comparative Education Research Center at the University of Hong Kong. He was formerly at Kyoto University for 15 years, and prior to that at other leading universities across East Asia including Tokyo University, National Taiwan University, and East China Normal. He has collaborated with a range of leading scholars across the region, including philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, environmental scientists, and Buddhist monks. These dialogues are afforded by academic fluency in both Japanese and Chinese (Mandarin). He has written extensively on theory in comparative education within the field’s leading journals and in collaboration with thinkers inside and out. Recent works include: Between Faith and Science: World Culture Theory and Comparative Education (2012, with Stephen Carney and Iveta Silova), Beyond the Western Horizon: Rethinking Education, Values, and Policy Transfer (2020, with Iveta Silova and Euan Auld), Comparative Education as Cultural Critique (2021) and Unlearning Cartesian Consciousness: On the Source of Anglo-American Prejudice towards East Asian education (Forthcoming 2026, with Nishihira Tadashi and Keita Takayama). This body of work, taken as a whole, seeks to reconnect the field of comparative education to the ‘place’ (topos, basho) of onto-hermeneutical encounter, self-awareness, and mutual learning.