The Oceania Comparative and International Education Society (OCIES, formerly ANZCIES) is a non-profit scholarly society that brings together educators, researchers, students, policymakers, and diverse education stakeholders from across Oceania and beyond.
For more than 50 years, OCIES has provided an inclusive and collaborative space for engaging with comparative and international education research, dialogue, and practice. As a regional society affiliated with the UNESCO-linked World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES), OCIES contributes to global conversations while remaining grounded in the diverse educational realities, knowledge traditions, and communities of Oceania.
OCIES is committed to fostering relational, regionally grounded, and internationally connected scholarship. The Society encourages critical engagement with educational issues across local, national, regional, and global contexts, while supporting approaches that are inclusive, collaborative, and attentive to the diverse histories, cultures, languages, and knowledge systems that shape education across Oceania.
The aims of the Society are to:
OCIES actively supports new and emerging researchers through the New and Emerging Researchers of OCIES (NERO) network, which promotes mentoring, collaboration, professional learning, and regional connections across the field.
The Society’s activities include hosting an annual conference and publishing its flagship journal, the International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives (IEJ:CP), which provides a platform for critically engaged and internationally connected scholarship from Oceania and beyond.
All OCIES Executive and General Committee positions are voluntary and open to nomination by members. Through its conferences, journal, networks, and collaborative activities, OCIES seeks to strengthen comparative and international education scholarship and contribute meaningfully to educational conversations, policy, and practice across the region and internationally.
The Oceania Comparative and International Education Society (OCIES) has a long and evolving history within the field of Comparative and International Education (CIE) across Oceania and beyond.
The Society was first established in 1973 as the Australia Comparative Education Society (ACES). Soon after, it became the Australian Comparative and International Education Society (ACIES), reflecting broader international shifts in the field as comparative education increasingly engaged with questions of international development, globalisation, and education policy.
A significant milestone came in 1983 when the Society held its 11th annual conference at the University of Waikato in Aotearoa, New Zealand — the first conference hosted outside Australia. That same year, the Society formally became the Australia and New Zealand Comparative and International Education Society (ANZCIES), recognising the growing participation of scholars from both countries.
Also in 1983, ANZCIES joined the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES), the global organisation representing comparative and international education societies worldwide. As the only recognised regional CIE society in Oceania, ANZCIES played an important role in connecting scholars across a vast, culturally diverse region.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, members of the Society began engaging in deeper conversations about the organisation’s future direction and what it meant to be a genuinely regional society. These discussions were shaped by growing scholarly attention to colonialism, globalisation, regional inequality, and the place of Indigenous and Pacific knowledges within comparative and international education.
Members and Pacific colleagues raised important questions about representation, inclusion, and belonging within a society whose name centred Australia and New Zealand despite claiming to represent the wider region. These conversations ultimately led to formal consultations regarding the Society’s future identity.
At the 2014 Annual General Meeting, members voted strongly in favour of renaming the Society the Oceania Comparative and International Education Society (OCIES).
The adoption of the name “Oceania” reflected a broader, more inclusive regional vision — one influenced by Pacific regional thought, including the work of Tongan scholar Epeli Hauʻofa, who conceptualised Oceania as an interconnected, relational space grounded in shared histories, movements, and Indigenous ways of knowing.
The transition from ANZCIES to OCIES marked more than a name change. It represented an ongoing commitment to building a more inclusive, relational, and regionally grounded scholarly community for Comparative and International Education across Oceania.
In 2015, OCIES held its first conference outside Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand at the University of the South Pacific’s Emalus Campus in Vanuatu, reflecting this expanding regional vision.
Today, OCIES continues to foster research, dialogue, collaboration, and community among scholars, practitioners, and emerging researchers across Oceania and the wider international CIE community. The Society remains committed to supporting diverse knowledge traditions, strengthening regional connections, and contributing to more equitable educational futures across the region.
Click here for a link to the paper by Eve Coxon and Juliana McLaughlin From ANZCIES to OCIES: Reinvigorating Comparative and International Education in Oceania on the World Voices Nexus website.
Click here for an overview of OCIES/ANZCIES conference history