KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
The conference will host a selection of internationally renowned keynote speakers whose work engages closely with the conference theme.
Their lectures will offer critical perspectives on contemporary challenges in education, democracy, and social change, helping to frame the main debates and directions of the conference.
GERT BIESTA
Adverse Childhood Experiences: A Site for Novel Encounters between Biological Research and Educational Justice?
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have become a topic of public and scientific attention in recent years. ACEs denote a range of negative experiences in early life, from sexual abuse to emotional neglect, that are thought to impact health and well-being over the life course. The term was coined in the CDC-Kaiser-ACE study, an epidemiological study that asked 17,000 adults about ACEs and their current health. Shortly after the study was published in 1998, the US CDC deemed ACEs the most important predictor of life course health. However, it is only recently that ACEs feature more prominently in scientific and public discourses, including in education. In this talk I present 1) a brief history of the ACEs concept and how it came to be linked to neuroscience and epigenetics in recent years and 2) a case study of novel, social justice-oriented practices in schools and juvenile correctional settings in the Pacific North-West of the United States that have emerged in relation to ACEs. In my presentation I will pay specific attention to notions of resilience that has gained prominence in recent years in relation to ACEs and critically discuss this turn, particularly with regard to important differences between individualist and community-oriented notions of resilience. For this talk I draw on work that has been jointly conducted and published with Prof. Dr. Martha Kenney at San Francisco State University.
Gert Biesta is Professor of Public Education at Maynooth University and Visiting Professor at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, and previously served as Professor of Educational Theory and Pedagogy at the University of Edinburgh. He advises the Dutch government through the Education Council of the Netherlands and has acted as an expert advisor for the Flemish government and the Council of Europe. His research focuses on educational theory and the philosophy of educational and social science research, with widely translated publications on teaching, curriculum, citizenship education, and education policy.
RADHIKA GORUR
Adverse Childhood Experiences: A Site for Novel Encounters between Biological Research and Educational Justice?
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have become a topic of public and scientific attention in recent years. ACEs denote a range of negative experiences in early life, from sexual abuse to emotional neglect, that are thought to impact health and well-being over the life course. The term was coined in the CDC-Kaiser-ACE study, an epidemiological study that asked 17,000 adults about ACEs and their current health. Shortly after the study was published in 1998, the US CDC deemed ACEs the most important predictor of life course health. However, it is only recently that ACEs feature more prominently in scientific and public discourses, including in education. In this talk I present 1) a brief history of the ACEs concept and how it came to be linked to neuroscience and epigenetics in recent years and 2) a case study of novel, social justice-oriented practices in schools and juvenile correctional settings in the Pacific North-West of the United States that have emerged in relation to ACEs. In my presentation I will pay specific attention to notions of resilience that has gained prominence in recent years in relation to ACEs and critically discuss this turn, particularly with regard to important differences between individualist and community-oriented notions of resilience. For this talk I draw on work that has been jointly conducted and published with Prof. Dr. Martha Kenney at San Francisco State University.
Professor Radhika Gorur lived and worked in Asia, Africa and the Middle-East before making her home in Australia. As well as being a member of REDI, she is a founding member and the Convenor of the Deakin Science and Society Network and a Director of the Laboratory of International Assessment Studies. Her research interests include education policy, regulation and reform; global networks, aid and development; the social studies of science and technology (STS); the sociology of numbers; and critical data studies. Here she talks about her background and her interest in how policy ideas are assembled and how numbers have gained influence in policy.