Name: José Cossa

Title: Associate Professor of Education

Department: Learning and Performance Systems

Phone: 814-863-9011

Email: jxc6421@psu.edu

Office address: 305A Keller Building

Directory entry: https://ed.psu.edu/directory/jxc6421

Cossa is a Mozambican scholar, writer/author, researcher, poet, blogger, “twitterer,” podcaster and entrepreneur. He holds a doctorate in cultural and educational policy studies with a depth area in comparative and international education from Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of the book “Power, Politics, and Higher Education: International Regimes, Local Governments, and Educational Autonomy,” the recipient of the 2012 Joyce Cain Award for Distinguished Research on People of African Descent, a co-founder of AI4Afrika, and a member of the MacArthur Foundation 100&Change Panel of Judges for two consecutive years (2018 Inaugural Challenge and 2019).

Cossa’s research focus is on adult online and distance education; education in Africa; African Renaissance; power dynamics in negotiation over educational policy; unveiling issues inherent in the promise of modernity and working toward de-colonializing, de-bordering, de-peripherizing, and de-centering the world; higher education policy and administration; system transfer; international development; global and social justice; and related topics. Currently, he is engaged in a new (exterior to modernity) theorizing, which he coined as Cosmo-uBuntu.

Cossa has taught in South Africa, Egypt and the United States.