Prof. Erwin H. Epstein

Professor Emeritus of Cultural and Educational Policy Studies

Center for Comparative Education, Loyola University Chicago, USA

Adjunct Research Professor, University at Albany-State University of New York

Devoted his professional life to advancing the field of comparative education - he is a former president of both the Comparative and International Education Society and the World Council of Comparative Education Societies. He is also a former editor of the Comparative Education Review.

Director of the University Center for International Studies and Professor of Humanistic Foundations of Education and of Rural Sociology at The Ohio State University (Prior to his tenure at Loyola)

Has been the Head of academic units at four universities and Visiting Professor at universities in Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and South Africa

A visiting lecturer at 12 North American universities as well as at universities in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, England, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Mexico, Peru, Russia, South Africa, Spain, and Taiwan

A Fulbright Professor in Mexico and an Academic Specialist for the United States Information Agency in Nicaragua

Served as a consultant to, among other organizations, the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Academy for Educational Development, and the Chilean Minister of Education

A member of the Honorary Academic Council of the Graduate Program in Educational Policy and Administration at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (Argentina)

Epstein has written and edited a variety of books, and his articles and chapters have appeared in scores of journals, books and encyclopedias

Among the journals for which he has been guest editor or otherwise on the editorial board are Comparative Education, Education and Urban Society, the International Journal of Educational Reform, Education Journal (Hong Kong Institute for Educational Research), World Studies in Education, the American Journal of Education, Educational Studies, World Studies in Education, Revista Latinoamericana de Educación Comparada, Revista Española de Educación Comparada, Revista Argentina de Educación Superior, and the Spanish/Portuguese languages edition of Education Policy Analysis Archives

Epstein was honored in 1985 as the recipient of the Lourdes Casal Award for the most outstanding work in the social sciences on Cuba

In 2005, he was designated International Professor of the Year by the Loyola University Chicago chapter of Phi Beta Delta honorary society

He gave the first Joseph Lauwreys Memorial Address at the Comparative Education Society in Europe as well as the Keynote address at an international meeting on education in Russia

He has addressed the Academy of Higher Education, a body of leading university presidents in Argentina, and has given the keynote address at meetings of the CIES Western and Midwestern regions

In 2012 he was made an Honorary Fellow of the Comparative & International Education Society, and in 2013 he was presented with a Lifetime Contribution Award in Comparative, International, and Development Education by the Institute for International Studies of Education at the University of Pittsburgh

Epstein's research interests include such varied topics as the impact of parasitic diseases on academic achievement, the imposition of U.S. educational policy on Cuba and Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American War, schoolchildren's sense of nationality in socio-culturally marginal communities, the role of education in globalization and democratization, and theory shifts and boundaries in comparative education. He originated the "filter-effect theory” of education to explain the impact of schools on schoolchildren's national identity in marginalized areas.

Although primarily a Latin Americanist and epistemologist, he has also published works on higher education in mainland China and Taiwan

Epstein directed the Comparative and International Education Course Archive Project (CIECAP) for a decade

Until his retirement, he co-directed the Joint Centers for Comparative Law and Education, which focuses on the legal right of children to an education, at Loyola University Chicago.

He regularly taught the introductory course to comparative education, comparative theory, and comparative perspectives on education and democratization