Dr Mai Abu Moghli

UCL Institute of Education 

5:30pm – 7:00pm, 22^nd March 2017
Room: 728
UCL Institute of Education (20 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL)

The Palestinian Ministry of Education (MOE) was established in 1994 following the signing of the interim peace agreement (the Oslo Accords) between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip inherited a weak, neglected and fragmented education system. However, over the years the MOE was able to increase the number of schools and decrease illiteracy rates. An important departure from the old curricula was the inclusion of human rights and citizenship education. In this presentation, II will focus on three questions related to the introduction of HRE in PA schools: 

What are the reasons behind the introduction of HRE in Palestinian Authority (PA) schools?

1. How do stakeholders make meaning of and implement HRE? 
2. What is the relationship between HRE and the struggle against the Occupation and for political and social change? 

Drawing upon ethnographic data generated from six months field research trip(s), and  examination of available literature, I will problematise the theoretical basis of HRE and highlight the importance of indigenous knowledge and strategies used to bring the decontextualised global HRE to the nuanced and politicised local, leading to a reconceptualisation of HRE that provides an alternative understanding of its potential contribution to the emancipation of the individual and collective within a polarised, multi-layered, and fast changing context.  

Dr Mai Abu Moghli is a Palestinian/British human rights practitioner and academic who specialises in human rights education. Mai holds a PhD from the UCL Institute of Education and a Master’s degree in human rights from the University of Essex. Her research focuses on human rights education in Palestinian Authority schools in the Occupied West Bank. Mai has also published articles on Palestinian/ Syrian refugees. She has worked extensively in the field of human rights in the MENA region and taught human rights theory and human rights education in both the UK and in the Occupied West Bank.

Dr Lindsey Horner

Senior Lecturer in Education Studies
Bath Spa University

5:30pm – 7:00pm, 22^nd February 2017
Room: 731
UCL Institute of Education (20 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL)

This presentation reports of the findings of a systematic and extensive literature review on teachers and peacebuilding conducted as part of the Research Consortium on Education and Peacebuilding, a collaboration between the University of Sussex, the University of Amsterdam and Ulster University and funded by UNICEF and the ESRC.

Focusing on teachers and their role in peacebuilding the presentation will map existing literature to shed insight on teacher identity, roles and agency in conflict affected areas, relating this to the project’s orientating framework of a just peace, drawing on conceptions of social justice.  Exploring the debates around, for example, educational outcomes, accountability, governance and teacher education it asks what role teachers, as key agents in education systems, have in promoting peace, social justice, reconciliation and mitigating violence. The presentation will also highlight some of the dilemmas and contradictions in the literature and field, acknowledging the double-sided nature of teacher agency which can equally promote or obstruct peace and the complexities of the contexts in which they work.

Dr Lindsey Horner is an academic and researcher in the field of Education and International Development, specialising in critical peace education and participatory research. She obtained her PhD from the University of Bristol in 2011, which explored critical peace education as the interactions of a multifarious understanding of peace and practices to facilitate moving these understandings forward (the work of translating peace) in conflict effected communities in Mindanao. The commitment to social justice, ethics and participant representation found in her seminal research form the foundation of her research commitment and driving motivation behind her research trajectory to date, which has seen me progress onto contributions to research projects exploring the theoretical resources, processes and benefits of co- designed/constructed/produced research and the role of teachers in peacebuilding.

She is currently a senior lecturer in International and Global education at Bath Spa University where she continues to develop these interests.

Arif Sahar
Doctoral Scholar, UCL Institute of Education

5:30pm – 7:00pm, 25^th January 2017
Room: Elvin Hall
UCL Institute of Education (20 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL)

Afghanistan is often characterised as a ‘failed’ or ‘fragile’ state in terms of state ‘functionality’, lacking in capacity to provide security and wellbeing to its citizens and generating security threats, violent conflict and terrorism. Since 2001, education has become a major victim of Afghanistan’s protracted crisis that historically underpins radical ideologies, international military interventions and fragile democracy. Drawing upon qualitative interviews with educational officials and development practitioners in Afghanistan and critically examining the literature in the area of education, conflict and international development, we argue that Afghanistan’s education is caught in the nexus between failing security conditions, weak governance and widespread corruption, resulting in capture of educational spaces for radicalisation and violent extremism. We also highlight some critical issues relating to educational programming in conflict-affected contexts.

Arif Sahar is currently pursuing his PhD at UCL Institute of Education. His research focuses on the political economy of education in post-2001 Afghanistan. Arif completed his MA in Political Science at UCL. Currently, Arif is researcher at University of Derby, College of Education. Prior to his appointment, Arif worked as Senior Adviser to the Afghan Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Economy and Ministry of Finance. He has also worked for numerous international development partners, including World Bank, UNDP and DFID. Arif has widely published in peer-reviewed journals, most recently in Central Asian Survey, Asian Journal of Political Science and The Diplomat. Arif has also translated books from English into Persian/ Dari.