Education is intertwined with social justice in multivarious ways, and it takes place in historically defined contexts. The proposed collective volume brings together a range of perspectives from an interdisciplinary array of social sciences with a clear focus on education. The authors include academics and some activists from Namibia and Germany. The contributions are centred on current issues and challenges, but in particular on account of the binational composition of the authors, the historical context of German colonial rule and the 1903-1908 genocide also form a focus of attention. However, the contributions do not rehearse history only or exclusively. Authors address an array of current issues, ranging from social justice to the issues of recognition, apology, and reparation connected with the genocide. The latter issue is connected in many ways with the questions of justice and equity as well as with the persistent high social inequality that besets Namibia. It affects the psycho-social well-being of learners and their family relations, but relates also to class room practice and the syllabus. One main concern here, motivated especially by educational considerations, is transgenerational trauma in the wake of the genocide. As has been shown in other, more intensely researched cases, most notably the Holocaust, trauma sustained from experiences of large-scale violence including mass killings, genocide or concentration camps may be transmitted to survivors’ posterity through several generations. In Namibia, various discourses among victim communities speak to this circumstance. The proposed volume addresses these issues from the various perspectives of educational science, history, philosophy, sociology, and public health. It addresses communal memory practices, which keep oral traditions alive. It also looks at curricular issues and various aspects of teaching practice, in particular approaches centred on social change.

Uwe H. Bittlingmayer studied Sociology, Philosophy and Political Science at the Institute of Sociology, Muenster University. He made his PhD at the same institute with a critical study about the knowledge society. Later on he worked in several third-funded projects at Bielefeld University at the Faculty of Public Health. Finally, he became full professor for general sociology at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Education Freiburg. 

Reinhart Kößler studied sociology, history, in particular Eastern European history and ethnology at the University of Heidelberg and Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds. He took his doctorate in sociology 1978 at the University of Münster and his senior doctorate (Habilitation) in 1987 also at Münster. He pursues a long-time interest in southern Africa, for many years with a focus on Namibia, combining scholarly and activist pursuits. After retiring as Director of the Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institut Freiburg in 2015, he remains an associate there as well as at the Department of Anthropology at the University of the Free State, South Africa. 

Charmaine Villet completed her Ph.D. studies in Curriculum and Instructional Leadership at Ohio University in the USA. She teaches in the Department of Applied Educational Sciences in the School of Education at the University of Namibia. Charmaine participated and led prominent studies on educational reform and transformation with the World Bank, UNESCO, the EU, the AU and in Namibia and the SADC region. She served as the co-chair of the International Taskforce on Teachers for Education 2030/UNESCO from 2016 – 2018 and heads the sub-cluster on Curriculum, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education under the African Union’s Continental Education Strategy for Africa/ CESA 2016-25 as articulated in the African Union’s vision of Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want.