During the struggles for independence in the global south, education became an important motor of emancipation. The postcolonial countries put the development of a democratic and de-racialized educational system on the agenda of urgent problems to be solved. In the course of this development, many cooperative education projects were undertaken between established socialist countries, including the Soviet Union, East Germany and Cuba, and African countries, Southern and Northern Asian countries, countries of the Middle East, and Latin American countries. Socialist Educational Cooperation and the Global South brings together a variety of topics, perspectives, and research approaches in this heterogeneous field, integrating for the first time a very broad interdisciplinary discourse and offering new insights into this important component of socialist globalization.

Ingrid Miethe is Full Professor for education at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany. Jane Weiß is a research assistant and project supervisor in the Department of History of Education at the Institute of Education Studies at Humboldt University Berlin.