In this Special Issue, we seek to develop a more nuanced understandings of current political and cultural shifts by taking a different approach to the study of populism, i.e., analysing it as having a more fully ideological relationship with the economic model and social ontology of globalised neoliberalism (Steger 2019). Following this line of argument, populism is not just a thin ideology instrumentalised by skilful authoritarian leaders, but rather it often draws upon, and builds on ideological resistance to a globalising neoliberal society, triggered by the socio-economic and cultural marginality of those left behind by these processes of neoliberal globalisation. Taking this as the starting point of our Special Issue, we move on to explore the relations between education, neoliberal globalisation and authoritarian populism.