About the Acting Director
HERVÉ VARENNE, a cultural anthropologist, has worked all his life on the processes
that produce particular conditions for human beings in history, on their consequences,
and on the place of education, understood broadly, in this production. Varenne was born
and raised n France. He received his doctorate in anthropology from the University of
Chicago in 1972. Since 1972 he has been on the faculty of Teachers College, Columbia
University. He chaired of the Department of International and Transcultural Studies
from 2000 to 2006 , and again from 2015 to 2024. In 2024, he was named acting
director of the Center on Chinese Education.
Varenne has conducted research in various settings (small towns, high schools,
families, suburbs, inner city, both in the United States and Ireland). Over the course of
his career, he has maintained several intersecting interest. The first is advancing
culture theory so that it can better capture the particularities of every human being
everyday life. The second is producing more careful accounts of “America” as a social
fact in the history of the world—particularly as it relates to schooling. The third, and
more recent, is re-imagining what “education” might mean by focusing less on learning
and more on the ignorance that triggers figuring out what to do next. These interests
are developed in several major works: Americans together (1977), American school
language (1983), Symbolizing America (1986), Ambiguous Harmony (1992) and in
many articles. In the 1980s he began a fruitful collaboration with Ray McDermott, now of
Stanford University. Together they look at “culture” as the historical contingencies that
disable many people in various ways and that much research, particularly in
“education,” reconstitute. This culminated in the 1998 book Successful Failure. Since
then, Varenne has worked to recast the grounds of research work in education to move
beyond the problematics of schooling. This developed into a book written in
collaboration with several of Varenne’s students: Educating in Life: Ethnographies of
challenging new normals (Routledge 2019). His most recent article was published in
Chinese as 人类学、比较与教育。
About the Executive Director
Dr. Henan Cheng is the executive director of the Center on Chinese Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has also been an adjunct professor in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College since 2012. Her primary research interests include international and comparative education, educational development and equity issues in China, especially issues related to education of ethnic minorities and children of migrants. Dr. Cheng’s publications on education of migrant children have been cited in national and international media outlets including Time Magazine, Huffington Post, Hechinger Report, and Reference News.
Dr. Cheng has extensive international and interdisciplinary experience and training. In addition to teaching and conducting research at various universities in China and the United States for 20 years, Dr. Cheng has also been actively involved in educational development work at a number of prestigious international organizations, including the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP), the Yale-China Association, and Boston-based Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund. Dr. Cheng holds degrees in automotive engineering and economics from Chongqing University and the University of International Business and Economics respectively, a master's from Boston University, and a doctorate in Comparative and International Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.