Interview: Sebastian Piepenburg

Sebastian Piepenburg is a third-year PhD candidate at the graduate school of applied history of education via Örebro University. Previously, he worked as a social science and history teacher at a lower secondary school and, after that, at the teacher training program at Örebro university. Christian Lundahl is his main supervisor, and Johannes Westberg is his assistant supervisor.

Interviewer: Can you tell me about your general research interests?
Sebastian: My dissertation? My dissertation is about the relationship between educational research and educational policymaking. I am interested in how the state tries to govern educational research from a historical perspective from the 1940s and onwards towards the early 2000nds. 

Interviewer: How did you become interested in that topic? 
Sebastian: That is a tricky question. Before the PhD started – the graduate school started like two years ago – I worked at this department as a teacher. I taught at the teacher program for two years. During those two years, I was mainly interested in what could be termed democracy education, didactics of democracy or something like that. But then this PhD position turned up. I talked to Christian Lundahl, who now is my supervisor, and he encouraged me to apply. We then started to talk about potential research topics that could be of interest. Then I began to elaborate on this idea. I think he sparked the idea initially, but then, over time, I became more interested in it. 

Interviewer: What was your topic when you first started your thesis?
Sebastian: It was pretty similar to what it is today, I would say. Christian popped the idea, and he said it would be interesting to investigate how politics have governed educational research from a historical perspective, and that is what I do now. However, I do not remember exactly what I wrote in my application. Of course, it has drifted away to some extent, but it is still quite similar.

Interviewer: What are other tasks that you do for the international graduate school apart from your research? 
Sebastian: What we have done so far is that we have had PhD courses together. We had courses for thirty credits, and we have also met up for workshops a few times, but apart from that, I we do not have any particular tasks to carry our for the graduate school. At my department, however, I do quite a lot of teaching at the teacher training programs. My teaching primarily includes courses on learning theories, didactics, and systematic quality development work.

Interview by Michal Mehrens , MA, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.