Introduction to the special issue ‘Return of the nation: Education in an era of rising nationalism and populism’ European Educational Research Journal 1–12 © The Author(s) 2023 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/14749041231188413 Nelli Piattoeva, Tampere University, Finland Sofia Viseu, Universidade de Lisboa Instituto da Educação, Portugal Jitka Wirthová, Centre for Science, Technology, and Society Studies, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic Corresponding author: Jitka Wirthová, Centre for Science, Technology, and Society Studies, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic. Email: wirthova@flu.cas.cz Absrtract This Special Issue of the European Educational Research Journal (Special Issue) contributes to the ongoing debate on the relationship between education, nationalism and populism to enhance scholarly understanding of the construction and maintenance of nationalism. The special issue consists in total of six original articles that cover different sources, spaces and forms of nationalism: banal and virulent, strategic and habitual, reproduced by state actors and power elites versus individuals or groups who echo, subvert or extend the official narratives and nationalism as both nested in topographical spaces as well as in topological relations. It foregrounds the specificity of nationalism as a discursive-material-affective practice that unfolds contextually. The articles highlight, for instance, the relationships between nationalism and other `isms’ (populism, religious conservatism and authoritarianism) and the evolving processes such as climate emergency, improving recognition of indigenous rights, ambiguous expertisation or ubiquitous digitalisation. Overall, for the sociologies of education, the special issue highlights the importance of exploring both how education reproduces nationalism and how nationalism (as a strategy, practice, discourse, place-building and position-legitimating or affect) intervenes in and takes advantage of education.