The volume presents research that emerges from the 9th international Adult Education Academy (2022), which brings together researchers, students and practitioners from around the world to share perspectives comparatively. More than 80 participants from almost 20 different countries have exchanged, compared and expanded their individual knowledge and experience on adult learning and education. This volume consisting of eight contributions (including one fundamental article beforehand) assumes that globalisation affects national, regional and local levels of adult learning and education. Transformational relations are observed and analysed through the lens of participation, sustainability and digitalisation. All contributions apply an international comparative research approach to empirically investigate these areas with their upcoming needs. This approach takes place under consideration of comparison as a research method which not only grounds on a long tradition and relies on a set of rules and techniques, but also on an inner attitude and sensitivity with which we look at the world and its global needs while trying to understand.

Dr. Lisa Breitschwerdt (1989) is a research associate at the Professorship for Adult and Continuing Education at the University of Würzburg. She works on digitalisation and professionalisation in adult and higher education, didactics and methods of teaching and learning and dialogical perspectives in adult education research. Dr. Jörg Schwarz (1978) is a research associate at the Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg. His research focuses on time in pedagogical contexts, professionalism in adult education, organisational research and pedagogy, practice theory and research methods. Prof. Dr. Sabine Schmidt-Lauff (1968) is Professor of Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning at the Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg. Her research focuses on professionalisation and professionalism, international comparative research in adult education and learning, and temporal conceptualisation of learning across the lifespan.