Prof Joel Samoff

Research Associate
Name: Joel Samoff
Faculty of Education  Staff Members

Contact Details:
Tel: +27 (0)11 559 7277

Email: joel1samoff@gmail.com

About Prof Joel Samoff

Educator, researcher, and evaluator, Joel Samoff combines the scholar’s critical approach and extensive experience in international development. From Tanzania coffee farmers to militant Michigan bus drivers to Namibian and South African education activists, his orienting concern has been understanding how people organize themselves to transform their communities. He studies the links among research, public policy, and foreign aid. At Stanford University since 1980, he was on the faculty of the Universities of California (Los Angeles, Santa Barbara), Michigan, and Zambia and has taught in Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Pretoria and the University of the Free State. He is a Comparative and International Education Society Honorary Fellow, the Society’s highest distinction. He is an Advisory Editor, International Journal of Educational Development, and editorial board member, Journal of Educational Research in Africa and the Southern African Review of Education.

Research Interests:

Key areas of expertise and inquiry

• Comparative Education
• Education Policy
• Education Politics
• Education as Liberation
• Political Economy of Africa

Selected Publications:

• Joel Samoff, Challenging the Research Complex: Education, External Influence, and Disrupting Dependence in Africa (2025)
• Joel Samoff “Financial-Intellectual Complex Revisited: Framing Education Research in Africa,” in Emnet Tadesse Woldegiorgis, Logan Govender, and Dennis Zami Atibuni, editors, Higher Education Transformation in Africa: A Quest for Epistemological Rupture (2025)
• Joel Samoff, “Ethnicity, Interests, and Class in Tanzania: Constructing Explanations,” in Scott Straus and Aili Mari Trip, editors, The State, Ethnicity, and Gender: Intellectual Legacies of Crawford Young (2024).

Projects:

Apartheid Meanings

Comparative Education: Contesting the Terrain