Jan Stenger, EURIAS Fellow 2015/2016, Award Winner

Jan Stenger has been awarded a Major Research Fellowship for the period 2016-2019 by the Leverhulme Trust, for his project 'The Age of the Pedagogue: Late Antiquity and the Metamorphosis of Education'.

This project will be build on the research conducted as EURIAS fellow in the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies during the 2015/2016 year.

Short description

This study addresses the controversy over education in the late Roman Empire from 300 to 600 CE. It proposes that the main driver behind the radical reconfiguration of classical teaching was the conviction that instruction can operate as a force for social change. Analysing texts and practices, it explores the ascent of pedagogy to a pervasive category of thought over that period, as well as examining the values and functions assigned to education, both formal and informal. Finally, it argues that the characteristically late-antique answers to the problem have influenced their medieval and modern counterparts up to the twenty-first century.