Jing Liu is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Education, Tohoku University, Japan. He received his doctorate in international development from the Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University, Japan, where he served as an assistant professor from 2013 to 2017. His dissertation, The Development of Inequality in Public School Admission: Public Discourses on Zexiao and Practices in Urban China, received the Best Dissertation Award from the Institute for International Studies in Education of the University of Pittsburgh (USA), and the Asia Pacific Research Prize (Commendation) from the Asia Pacific Forum, Awaji Conference Japan, in 2013. This dissertation was published by Springer under the title Inequality in Public School Admission in Urban China: Discourses, Practices, and New Solutions. His research areas include sociology of education, international and comparative education, and education for sustainability. He began his studies on education in 2007 and has accumulated considerable experience in researching educational development in East Asia and in Southeast Asia. His current research projects include school collaboration for school improvement in China and Japan, small-scale schools and quality education in rural China, education for left-behind children in rural China, and transformation of higher education for sustainability in Asia.Francis Peddie is an associate professor in the Peace and Governance Program of the Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University, Japan. He holds a doctorate in history from York University (Canada) in Latin American and Canadian social history and is the author of Young, Well-Educated and Adaptable: Chilean Exiles in Ontario and Quebec, 1973–2010 (University of Manitoba Press, 2014). His current research focuses on labor migration from a small town in the Philippines, an ongoing examination of the Japanese Technical Intern Trainee Program and the changes taking place in Japanese immigration policy.
