Aizuddin Mohamed Anuar

Biography

Before joining Keele in September 2022, Aizuddin completed his DPhil in Education as a Clarendon Scholar and Doctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Oxford. He also holds an MSc in Education (Comparative and International Education) from Oxford and an MA in Cognitive Studies in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Aizuddin previously received undergraduate training in engineering (UNSW Sydney) and worked in the corporate philanthropy sector in Malaysia, focusing on education projects. He researches and teaches in the field of comparative and international education.

Aizuddin is currently the co-lead of the Ethnography stream for Methods North West (regional methods hub for Universities of Manchester, Lancaster, Liverpool, Keele and Central Lancashire), as well as the Book Review Editor for Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education.

Research and scholarship

The research that informs my teaching is primarily concerned with the relationship between education and inter/national development. Within this intersection, I explore perspectives from the ground up--among rural populations, people’s history as well as traditional, generational knowledges. My ethnographic, participatory and creative work has so far explored science education policy, informal and rural education, traditional proverbs on sustainability and oral histories of national development with a focus on Malaysia. Theoretically and methodologically, I am also interested in postcolonial studies and the politics of knowledge production.   

Drawing on my DPhil completed in 2022 and additional work, I am currently working on a monograph that follows the trail of the Malaysian developmental state’s use of science education to realise national aspirations of progress and modernity. I trace its effects on the contemporary lives of young people in the rural margins of such progress. In tandem, my own genealogy is weaved in to uncover the temporal effects of the state’s aspirations across different generations.

More broadly, I situate my research within the field of comparative and international education. Alongside colleagues, I have been tracing the development of this field in Malaysia through our CIE in Malaysia project. In 2023, our book chapter chronicling this project won the Best Paper Award from the Post-foundational Approaches Special Interest Group of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES).

Teaching

I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and I teach modules across both undergraduate and postgraduate education programmes.

Undergraduate modules

• Comparative Education (Level 5)
• Educational Developments Around the World (Level 6)

Postgraduate modules

• Issues in Inclusive Education
• International Comparative Education
• Professional Doctorate (Pilot Study, Thesis Proposal)

Supervision

I welcome supervision enquiries from students interested in doctoral projects within the field of comparative and international education in line with my research interests, with a regional focus on Southeast Asia or with a methodological focus on ethnography or participatory approaches.

Collaborations and grants awards

• FHUMSS Research Fund, Keele University with Zikri Rahman, Pusat Sejarah Rakyat (Link: https://pusatsejarahrakyat.org/) 2023-present
• Interdisciplinary Seedcorn Fund, Institute for Sustainable Futures, Keele University with Olga Mun 2023
• FreshEd Flux Fellowship 2021 
• CIE in Malaysia project, with Pravindharan Balakrishnan 2020-present 
• British Association of International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Student Fieldwork Grant 2019
• Clarendon Scholarship (2018-2021)