Kazamias, Andreas M. 

Short Biography & Significant Contribution

Andreas M. Kazamias is a scholar-intellectual with multiple identities. A Greek Cypriot, he was nurtured in the Western European liberal arts and the classical humanistic educational tradition—the European humanistic paideia (culture). He became an American citizen and received a doctorate from Harvard University in the humanistic foundations of education. He has spent his lifetime as a researcher and university professor of comparative education, history of education/ paideia and history of educational thought in the USA, Greece and Cyprus. He also periodically lectures in Brazil, Denmark, England, Germany, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Malta, People’s Republic of China, the Soviet Union, Spain, and Turkey. He was director of and actor in Shakespearian plays and ancient Greek tragedies.

Professor Kazamias is an author of numerous scholarly books, monographs and articles—in English and Greek—in comparative education and the history of education, some of which have been translated into Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish. He has organized and/or spoken at international conferences in the USA, Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean (Cyprus, Israel, Lebanon and Turkey), in the People’s Republic of China, Mexico, North Korea and the Soviet Union. He served as editor and/or member of the editorial boards of scholarly periodicals (e.g. Harvard Educational Review, Comparative Education Review, the Greek Comparative and Education Review and the Greek Pedagogical Review, Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies). He was also a past president of professional associations such as the North American Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), the Pedagogical Society of Greece and the Hellenic Society of Comparative Education.

He was a pioneer in the development of comparative education as a ‘modernist episteme’. He positions himself as a comparative humanist historian of education and paideia, a leftist critical intellectual, and a Socratic ‘gadfly’ or critical humanist. In Europe, Andreas Kazamias is known as the Greek Comparativist, not only because of his Greek ethnic background, but also because of the Hellenic Humanism that  pervades his research and writings, as well as the skillful use of ancient  Greek myths, symbols and metaphors in the critical analysis of modern/contemporary educational problems and issues, as demonstrated in such studies as The Turkish Sisyphus: Ataturk, Islam and the Quest for European Modernity (2006), Agamemnon Contra Prometheus: Globalisation, Knowledge/ Learning Societies and Paideia in the New Cosmopolis (2009) and The Owl of Athena: Reflective Encounters with the Greeks on Pedagogical Eros and the Paideia of the Soul (Psyche) (2010).

Kazamias’ areas of scholarly interest and research include the following: (a) epistemological and methodological problems of Comparative Education; (b) politics, society, the state and educational policy; (c) citizenship education; (d) comparative-historical inquiries into the formation, growth and change of educational systems and the role of education in social, political and economic development and modernization; (e) educational reforms in liberal democratic and in ‘transition’ states with  particular emphasis on educational reforms in the ‘New Europe’ and in Turkey; and (f) comparative-historical studies in globalization and its discontents, with particular reference to its impact on educational knowledge and pedagogy.  

For his scholarly work in the fields of comparative education and the history of education, Kazamias received the following honors/awards: Honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt) from the University of Bristol (UK); Honorary Doctorates (Ph.Ds) from the Universities of Ioannina and Crete (Greece); Aristeion (Excellence Award) from the Government of Cyprus; Associate Member of the Academy of Athens;  Honorary Fellow of the Comparative and International Society (CIES); and  Honorary Member of the Comparative Education Society in Europe (CESE). He is also listed in Who’s Who in American Education, Who’s Who in Greece, Dictionary of International Biography and The Dictionary of British and American Authors.

Website: https://eps.education.wisc.edu/eps/people/emeritus/andreas-kazamias

Educational Background

B.A. (Hons.) in Liberal Arts (History, Literature and Classical Greek), University of Bristol, England (1948)

M. Sc. in Education, Fort Hays Kansas State College, Hays, Kansas, USA (1954)

Ed. D. (Doctor of Education) in Humanistic Foundations of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1958)

D. Litt (Doctor of Letters honoris causa), University of Bristol, England (2000)

Ph.D. (Hon), University of Ioannina, Greece (2001)

Ph.D (Hon), University of Crete, Greece (2012)

Professional Background

Master, English School, Nicosia, Cyprus (1948-53).

Teaching Fellow, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1955-58)

Assistant Professor of Education and Director, Master of Arts in Teaching Program, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio (1958-61)

Assistant Professor of Education, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (1961-64). 

Professor of Educational Policy Studies (Comparative Education and History of European Paideia), University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin (1964-2005); Professor Emeritus (2005).

Visiting Professor of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1969).

Visiting Professor, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel (1972).

Fulbright Research Scholar and Lecturer in Greece and Cyprus (1979-80).

Professor of Education, School of Philosophy, University of Crete, Greece (1981-90).

Professor of Comparative Education, University of Athens, Greece (1990-96); Professor Emeritus (1996-).

Affiliations (associations, organizations, institutions)

Phi Delta Kappa Commission on International Relations in Education, l960‑64.

Comparative and International Education Society (CIES): Founding Member; Member of Board of Directors (1964-67); President (1971-72); Editor of Comparative Education Review (1970-1978); Honorary Fellow.

Greek Comparative Education Society (ELESE): Founding Member; President (1992-2003); Honorary President; Co-Editor of Comparative and International Education Review.

Comparative Education Society in Europe (CESE): Honorary Member

European Community Studies Association

Selected Publications

Kazamias, A. M. (1960). "What Knowledge is of Most Worth?  An Historical Conception and a Modern Sequel," Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Fall, l960) pp. 307‑330. (Translated into Greek).

Kazamias, A. M. (1963)."History, Science and Comparative Education: A Study in Methodology," International Review of Education, Vol. VII (1963), pp. 383-398.

Kazamias, A. M. and Massialas, B. G. (1965). Tradition and Change in Education:  A Comparative Study,    Prentice‑Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Translated into Italian, Spanish and Chinese.

Kazamias, A. M. (1966). Politics, Society and Secondary Education in England, l895‑l926, Oxford University Press, and University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kazamias, A. M. (1966, 1969). Education and the Quest for Modernity in Turkey, University of Chicago Press and George Allen and Unwin.

Kazamias, A. M. (1972). "Comparative Pedagogy:  An Assignment for the Seventies," Comparative Education Review (October, l972), pp. 406‑411. 

Kazamias, A. M. with Karl Schwartz (1977)."Intellectual and Ideological Perspectives in Comparative Education:  An Interpretation," Comparative Education Review, Vol. 21, Nos. 2/3 (June/October, l977), pp. 153‑l76.

Kazamias, A. M. with Spillane, M. (Eds.) (1998). Education and the Structuring of the European Space. Athens: CESE/Seirios Editions. 

Kazamias, A. M. (2000). "Crisis and reform in US education: A Nation at Risk, 1983 and all that, " in World Yearbook of Education, 2000, ed. by D. Coulby, R. Cowen and C. Jones (London: Kogan Page, 2000), pp.214-231.

Kazamias, A. M. (2001). "Re-inventing the Historical in Comparative Education: Reflections on a Protean Episteme by a Contemporary Player, " Comparative Education, Vol. 37, No. 4 (2001), pp. 439-449. 

Kazamias, A. M. (2001). "Globalization and educational cultures in late modernity: the Agamemnon syndrome, " in World Yearbook of Education 200l, ed. by D. Coulby and C. Jones (London: Kogan Page, 2001).

Kazamias, A. M. (2008). On Comparative Education or Towards a Promethean Humanism in the New Cosmopolis. Athens: Atrapos Press. In Greek and English.

Kazamias, A. M. (2009). "Agamemnon Contra Prometheus: Globalization, Knowledge/ Learning Societies and Paideia in the New Cosmopolis" in  International Handbook  of Comparative Education, ed. by Robert Cowen and Andreas M. Kazamias  (Springer, 2009), pp. 1079-1111. Translated into Portuguese and Greek.

Cowen, R. and Kazamias, A. M. (Eds.) (2009). International Handbook of Comparative Education, 2 Vols. Springer Publishers, the Netherlands. Translated into Portuguese.

Kazamias, A. M. (2010). "The Owl of Athena: Reflective Encounters with the Greeks on Pedagogical Eros and the Paideia of the Soul (Psyche) " in  Changing Educational Landscapes: Educational Policies, Schooling Systems and Higher Education—A Comparative Perspective, ed by Dimitris Mattheou (Springer Publishers, the Netherlands), pp. 21-42.

Created: 4/23/2015

Contributed By:  Kazamias, Andreas M., University of Wisconsin-Madison