Keynotes
Dr Michalinos Zembylas
Michalinos Zembylas is Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University of Cyprus and an Honorary Professor at the Nelson Mandela University in the Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation.
He has written extensively on emotion and affect in relation to social justice pedagogies, intercultural and peace education, human rights education and citizenship education. His recent books include: Psychologized Language in Education: Denaturalizing a Regime of Truth (with Z. Bekerman), and Socially Just Pedagogies in Higher Education (co-edited with V. Bozalek, R. Braidotti, and T. Shefer). In 2016, he received the Distinguished Researcher Award in “Social Sciences and Humanities” from the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation.
Dr Vanessa Andreotti
Vanessa Andreotti is a Brazilian-Canadian scholar and former Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. Her research examines the ontological foundations of modernity and their implications for education, global justice, Indigenous knowledge systems, and planetary crises. She is the author of Hospicing Modernity and Outgrowing Modernity, and a founding member of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures research collective.
Over more than three decades, her work has traced how dominant ontological assumptions, particularly those grounded in separation from nature, progress, and human exceptionalism, shape systemic harm, educational practice, and responses to social, ecological, and epistemic crises. Her research spans global citizenship education, critical and decolonial literacies, Indigenous knowledge systems, and the climate and nature emergency, and is widely engaged across academic, policy, and civil society contexts internationally.
Dr Jon-Håkon Schultz
Professor Jon-Håkon Schultz has a PhD in special needs education and in medical anthropology. He is working as a professor in educational psychology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, department of education and teacher training.
His research is focusing on how traumatic stress affect students learning capacity and how to provide mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) within the context of education. He is also involved in research on cultural aspects of how traumatic stress is experienced and dealt with. He has been collaborating with Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) since 2006, working with education in emergencies