Conference

The past two decades have been marked by fundamental changes in economy, politics and ideology, reshaping significantly the concepts and practice of adult education. Technological changes, especially the increased use of information and communication technology (ICT), and marketisation and changing employment relations have increased the need for adult education and boosted certain branches and organizational forms of education and training. At the same time, many social goods have been transformed into service commodities, with an increasing tendency of state withdrawal from social services, including education, whose delivery is increasingly left to the regulation of the free market.

The end of the welfare state marked the beginning of the new role of adult education, and new kind of challenges. The same tendencies shaped research and the academia, both in terms of methodology and topics, influencing the realm of scientific research on adult education.

The conference aims to explore what happens with adult education during this shift, how the post-modern world, marked by the neoliberal economies, the growing power of ICT and the privatisation of services, is influencing concepts, practices and research of adult education in its various fields (for example general, vocational, further, community and higher education of adults, literacy, education of specific target groups etc.). We invite researchers employing theoretical, empirical, historical, comparative and other approaches which explore these questions and topics to join us in Belgrade.