People

Yomna Awad

Education, Awareness, and Outreach Specialist, Office of the Vice-President Equity and Community Inclusion
Toronto Metropolitan University

Dr. Yomna Awad is an Education, Awareness, and Outreach Specialist with the Office of the Vice-President Equity and Community Inclusion at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). She has a PhD in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Development with a collaborative specialization in Comparative International & Development Education (CIDE) from the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE), the University of Toronto, Canada. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the American University in Cairo. She established a Montessori School in the Greater Toronto Area that has been serving children ages 2.5 to 9 years since 2005. Dr. Awad is a certified Montessori Teacher Educator and a Sessional Lecturer at CIDEC-OISE at the University of Toronto. Her research interests are teacher professional learning, online learning, peace-building and citizenship education in conflict zones and relatively democratic societies. yreda@torontomu.ca

Michelle Bellino

Associate Professor, University of Michigan Marsal Family School of Education


Michelle Bellino is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan Marsal Family School of Education. Her research centers on the intersections between education and youth civic development, in contexts impacted by armed conflict and forced displacement. Across diverse settings, she explores how experiences with violence, asylum, and peace and justice processes influence young people’s participation in schools and society, future aspirations, as well as educational access and inclusion. She draws on ethnographic methods and youth participatory action research to ask how young people construct understandings of justice and injustice, while shaping an evolving sense of themselves as local and global civic actors. She is the author of Youth in Postwar Guatemala: Education and Civic Identity in Transition and co-editor of (Re)constructing memory: Education, identity, and conflict. Youth in Postwar Guatemala won the Council of Anthropology and Education’s Outstanding Book Award and Comparative and International Education Society’s Jackie Kirk Book Award.

Maria Jose Bermeo

Assistant Professor, School of Education of the University of Los Andes


Maria Jose Bermeo is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education of the University of Los Andes. Her research and teaching interests focus on educational policy and practice in contexts affected by armed conflict, illicit markets, and criminal governance, with special attention to themes of teacher agency, wellbeing, reparation and belonging. She holds an Ed.D and Ed.M in Comparative and International Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, an Advanced Certificate in Cooperation and Conflict Resolution from the ICCCR of Columbia University, and an M.A. in International Relations from St Andrews University.

Kathy Bickmore

Professor of Curriculum and Pedagogy
Comparative and International Development Education Center
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto


Kathy Bickmore is Professor of Curriculum and Pedagogy affiliated with the Comparative and International Development Education Centre at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. In 2022-23, she was William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research and teaching focus on young people’s and teachers’ school learning opportunities for engagement in building and making just peace, gender equity, and deepened democracy, in Canada and Latin America from comparative transnational and local perspectives. Recent chapters appear in Contestations of Citizenship: Children and Youth, Democracy, and Education in an Era of Global Change (Routledge), International Handbook on Critical Theories of Education(Palgrave). ), and Educación Para la Ciudadanía en Tiempos Constituyentes (Chile: FONDECYT).

Jennifer Brant

Assistant Professor, Department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning, University of Toronto


Jennifer Brant, first and foremost a mother of two boys, belongs to the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk Nation) with family ties to Six Nations of the Grand River Territory and Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. Jennifer is an Assistant Professor in the department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the University of Toronto and writes and teaches about Indigenous literatures; Indigenous Maternal Pedagogies and Methodologies; and Ethical Spaces for Liberatory Praxis. Her work positions Indigenous literatures as educational tools to move students beyond passive empathy, inspire healing and wellness, and foster socio-political action. Jennifer is also the co-editor of Forever Loved: Exposing the Hidden Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada and is currently working with Dawn Lavell-Harvard on a second book to call for immediate responses to the 231 Calls for Justice released in Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Constadina Charalambous

Assistant Professor in Language and Literacy, European University Cyprus


Constadina Charalambous is Assistant Professor in Language and Literacy at the European University Cyprus (PhD in Sociolinguistics & Education King’s College, 2009). Her main research interests revolve around language education, literacy and multilingualism, in relation to larger cultural and socio-political ideologies and especially in relation to (in)security, peace and conflict. She has also a long-standing interest in teacher training and teacher professional development and has been involved in many teacher education programmes (topics include: Peace Education, Human Rights Education, Refugee Education, Digital Literacy, etc). She has received funding from Leverhulme Trust, British Academy, Fulbright and European Union, as well as local funding for several projects, working mainly on issues related to migrants, diasporas, education and (in)securitization. Her work is published in various international journals, edited volumes, and special issues. She has co-authored “Peace Education in a Conflict-affected society” (CUP, 2016), and co-edited “Security, Ethnography & Discourse: Transdisciplinary Encounters” (2022, Routledge).

Sarah Dryden-Peterson

Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Director of Refugee REACH


Sarah Dryden-Peterson is Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Director of Refugee REACH, bringing together educators, researchers, and policymakers in co-creating quality education and welcoming communities in settings of mass displacement. She teaches courses on qualitative research methods, education in armed conflict, and education in uncertainty. She is the author of Right Where We Belong: How Refugee Teachers and Students are Changing the Future of Education (Harvard University Press, 2022). Learn more about her academic research publications and her Mowana Research Lab.

Jennifer Chinenye Emelife

PhD candidate in Curriculum and Pedagogy
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto


Jennifer Chinenye Emelife has an interest in critical literacy, critical pedagogy, and education for youth from displacement backgrounds. Through her initiative, Teach for Change Nigeria, Jennifer has written numerous guides for the critical teaching of secondary literature in West African secondary schools. She is a 2019 finalist of the British Council ELTons Awards for Innovation in English Language Teaching and a Chevening alumna with the University of Sussex where she studied for a Master's in International Education and Development. Jennifer is currently a PhD student in Curriculum and Pedagogy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Her research problematizes the dominant discourse on displacement and marginalized youth while interrogating alternative ways of engaging internally displaced youth to portray them as humans with agency, desire and beauty. Jennifer is also a Research Associate on the Addressing Injustices Project, a youth participatory action research-informed project funded by the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. She has completed education and peace-building research projects for international actors including UNESCO and INEE. In 2022, she was awarded the PEO International Peace Scholarship.

Li-Ching Ho

Professor of Social Studies Education, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Madison


Li-Ching Ho is Professor of Social Studies Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction . Her research, conducted primarily in East and Southeast Asia, focuses on global civic education, issues of diversity in civic education, and environmental citizenship education. She was previously a recipient of the Vilas Faculty Early Career Investigator Award and the College and University Faculty Assembly Early Career Research Award. Her latest book, co-authored with Keith Barton, is Curriculum for Justice and Harmony. She is a co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Global Citizenship and Education and has published research in Theory and Research in Social Education, Journal of Curriculum Studies, Teachers College Record, and Teaching and Teacher Education. She has also worked closely with scholars, teachers, and students in numerous countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Brunei, and the Philippines.

Najme Kishani

Policy Research Analyst


Najme Kishani is a policy research analyst, bridging policy and innovative research to foster evidence-based decision-making and strategic design. Through her work in North America, the Middle East, and East Africa, she has been trying to strengthen institutional capacity to promote equity and justice to empower underrepresented populations. In her current role as a research associate at the University of Toronto, Najme is invested in promoting equity analysis and championing women's leadership in STEM fields. She also helms a UNICEF project to bolster the resilience of national education and social protection systems in response to refugee influxes and emergency disasters. Najme completed her award-winning Ph.D. dissertation at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, the University of Toronto. Her research interest lies in the transformative power of education for social change through enhancing young people's hope, motivation, and capability to navigate social conflicts conditioning their lives.

Paula Mantilla-Blanco

PhD Candidate, Columbia University


Paula Mantilla-Blanco is a PhD Candidate in Comparative and International Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research focuses on education in crisis, conflict, and post-conflict contexts, and specifically on the role of non-formal spaces of education in memory- and state-building in countries transitioning to peace. Paula’s dissertation work centers youth voices and engages with multiple stakeholders to explore the role of state-sponsored memory sites, such as museums and memorials, in educating for peacebuilding in Colombia, her home country. This work has been funded by the NA/Ed Spencer Fellowship and the USIP Peace Scholar Fellowship, among others.

Diego Nieto

Coordinator of Knowledge Management and Education
Improbable Dialogues Platform, Colombia


Diego Nieto has a PhD in Pedagogy and Curriculum with emphasis in Comparative, International, and Development Studies in Education from the University of Toronto (Canada). His areas of expertise combine critical studies on pedagogy, peacebuilding, human rights and education in conflict zones, with projects and research on interethnic and intercultural relations in Colombia, local citizen participation, and Latin American youth studies. He is currently Coordinator of Knowledge Management and Education at the Improbable Dialogues Platform in Colombia.

Judith Pace

Professor, University of San Francisco School of Education


Judith (Judy) Pace is a Professor of Education at the University of San Francisco’s School of Education. This year she has a Fulbright Global Scholar Award to co-teach and conduct research on preparing teachers for teaching controversial issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina and South Africa. Her scholarship examines classroom teaching and curriculum and its relationship to diversity, democracy, and sociopolitical contexts. In the U.S. she has studied classroom authority relationships and academic engagement, teaching for democratic citizenship in government classes, and social studies teaching under high stakes accountability. She conducted cross-national research on teacher preparation in history, citizenship, and social studies and her latest book is Hard Questions: Learning to Teach Controversial Issues. Her other books are The Charged Classroom: Predicaments and Possibilities for Democratic Teaching, Educating for Democratic Citizens in Troubled Times (co-edited with Janet Bixby), and Classroom Authority: Theory, Research, and Practice (co-edited with Annette Hemmings).

Catherine Pitcher

PhD Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Education


Catherine Pitcher is a doctoral student at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has over 10 years of experience in education in the US in roles that range from special education teacher to instructional coach to department head to educational game designer. She started working in Palestine in 2017, first teaching and then designing and implementing educational programming. Currently, she is working on research to understand how Palestinian youth think about and build their futures and continues to lead programming in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. She holds an Ed.M. from Harvard in International Education Policy and serves on the editorial board of the Harvard Educational Review.

Paloma Ramírez

Founding member, Research and Services Center for Education and Training
Academic Seminar in Management, Inclusion and Convivencia in Educational Institutions
International Organization of Philosophy New Acropolis

Paloma Ramírez was born in Mexico in 1977. She holds a master’s degree in science with a specialization in Educational Research from the Department of Educational Research at the National Polytechnic Institute. She has worked on several research projects regarding issues of violence, school Convivencia and peacebuilding; she has developed projects on teacher training, curriculum design and program evaluation for institutions such as UNESCO Mexico, state governments, Organization of Ibero-american States and higher education institutions. She is a founding member of the Research and services center for education and training, member of the Academic Seminar in Management, Inclusion and Convivencia in Educational Institutions and member, for the last 15 years, of the International Organization of Philosophy New Acropolis.