Oct

Education for Sustainable Development: past, present and future

by LSBU

Actions and Detail Panel

Sales Ended

Event description

Celebrating RCE London's 10th Anniversary with a series of webinars entitled 'Sustainability and Beyond'

About this event

This event has been postponed until further notice. Apologies for any inconvenience.

RCE London is celebrating the 10th year since it was endorsed and admitted to the global RCE network (Regional Centre of Expertise for Education for Sustainable Development ) by the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS).

RCE London is marking this milestone year with a webinar series entitled 'Sustainability and Beyond' with the emphasis on an eclectic mix of themes around the Sustainable Development Goals.

Each webinar will be presented virtually by a member(s) of RCE London and there will be time for discussion & questions. The series Chair is Ros Wade, Emeritus Professor, LSBU and Chair of RCE London. The series is hosted by London South Bank University (LSBU) and have been curated in co-operation with the LSBU Sustainability Research Group. You will receive the joining instructions 3 days before each webinar takes place.

Education for Sustainable Development: past, present and future

Education for Sustainable Development is an alternative form of education that is envisioned to help society transition towards sustainability through achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The webinar will start with an invited talk by Professor Daniella Tilbury on the origins and progress of ESD from the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 and Agenda 21 to the ESD for 2030 roadmap launched by UNESCO in early 2021. The second part of the webinar will include a panel discussion of invited speakers who will share their experience implementing ESD initiatives and their insights on its transformations, progress, challenges, and a new vision for 2030 and beyond. Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in the discussion by asking their questions and sharing their views. Confirmed panel members include Professor Ros Wade, Dr Jaya Gajparia, Dr Françoise Laveuve and Dr Ayar Ata.

Speaker biographies

Dr Vasiliki Kioupi Vasiliki has completed her doctoral degree at the Centre for Environmental Policy of Imperial College London (ICL) in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) with special emphasis on the development and assessment of learner sustainability competences from a systems thinking perspective. She received a prestigious President’s PhD Scholarship from ICL to fund her research. She also holds a BSc in Biology and an MSc in Science and Environmental Education from the University of Athens with research focus on Environmental science, Ecology and Project-based learning.

She is an experienced Science Teacher, Environmental Educator, teacher trainer and served as ESD coordinator in a large school district in Athens Greece. In her last role, she worked in a Directorate for Secondary Education, a regional authority of the Greek Ministry of Education and gained experience in education policy. She has developed educational material and assessments for primary, secondary and tertiary education. She has collaborated with various international organisations and academic institutions to develop and run teacher training sessions on sustainability topics. She has published her research in Scientific and Educational Journals and is reviewer of publications for conferences and Journals in the fields of Sustainability and Education. She is member of the London Regional Centre of Expertise on ESD, advisor for NGO COMMEET on implementing regional sustainability efforts and member of the Focus on Sustainability committee of the Materials Research Society.

Professor Daniella Tilbury is an educator, policy expert and academic leader in sustainable development credited with having developed the initial frameworks for education in this field. She has acted as an advisor to national agencies in Europe, Latin America and Oceania as well as travelled extensively in Africa and Asia to evaluate the investment and impact of education for sustainability policies and programmes.

Daniella was a member of the Board of WWF Australia that brought Earth Hour to the World in 2007 and has been actively involved in international education initiatives that inspire transitions towards sustainability and climate positive futures. Her 2020 ‘Today4Tomorrow’ and ‘FutureMakers’ initiative is focused on embedding intergenerational rights and sustainability learning in public policy.

Before becoming Gibraltar’s first Commissioner for Sustainable Development and Future Generations in 2018, she was the inaugural Vice-Chancellor of the University of Gibraltar, an institution that embeds sustainability education at its core. Previously, she held academic leadership and research positions in Australia, UK and Hong Kong. She was UK’s first Dean of Sustainability, a post she held at the University of Gloucestershire. Her largest research grant of A$6m served to establish the Australian Research Institute in Education for Sustainability (ARIES) to advise Australian government policy and initiatives in support of learning for sustainability.

During 1995-2019 she chaired several UN Committees and was commissioned by UNESCO to develop think pieces, expert reviews, policy advice, frameworks and sector evaluations. Daniella is currently the UK government’s focal point on the UN Economic Commission for Europe on matters relating to learning for sustainability.

Last year, Daniella was recognised with an Hon. Fellowship by the University of Cambridge, St Catharine’s College and a Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Girona for her contributions to education for sustainability. She has over 100 refereed publications and given keynote addresses at international conferences across the globe. Recent interventions saw her as a leading speaker at the European Forum on Science and Education for Sustainability- the conference that marked the start of the German Presidency of the EU Council (Oct 2020) and UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainability (June 2021).

Dr Jaya Gajparia is a Senior Lecturer and teaches a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses at LSBU. She is also the course director of the MSc degree in Education for Sustainability, the lead for the schools Sustainability Research Group, a doctoral supervisor, and Fellow of HEA. Jaya began her academic career in 2011 completing her funded doctoral research on Gender, Poverty and Development in 2015. She is a keen advocate of systems thinking and inclusive education. Before academia, Jaya spent ten years working in the charity sector, she supports several grassroots NGOs in India and is a charity trustee for London Environmental Educators Forum (LEEF).

Ros Wade is a distinguished research fellow of the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Solutions and chair of RCE London. She was a lead researcher in the EU funded Fresh Start project on migrant entrepreneurial education from 2017-2109 and is a member of COMMEET community empowerment fellowship. Ros has been an educator all her working life, and has built up wide expertise across the formal, non formal and informal sectors.

She sees herself as an engaged academic who is seeking to be an agent for change towards a more sustainable planet and she tries to put this philosophy into practice in the way she works with others, collaboratively and supportively. Her early life in India where she was born and brought up shaped her interests in development and led her to work for Oxfam for 15 years before joining LSBU. This experience has ensured that her research and scholarship is grounded in the practical needs of stakeholders and that it is relevant to real world applications.

Françoise Laveuve is the founder and director of RCE Brittany, acknowledged by the United Nations University – Institute of the Advanced Study of Sustainability on 5 April 2013. She holds a PhD in Literature and her professional life started with UNDP in Africa, where she had been working for nine years as Program Assistant, and was in charge of Refugees with UNHCR. This became a strong and founding experience for her. Back in France, she was High School Literature teacher for thirty years, teaching also Expression, Communication and General Culture in post baccalaureate classes and at university. At the same time, she was a researcher in Didactics.

She became a Teacher of French as a foreign language for Chinese, Cambodian and Vietnamese PhD and Post Doctorate students in Mathematics at the University of South Brittany (UBS, Vannes). In collaboration with the Laboratory of Mathematics, she has been working on ESD and the SDGs projects. She co-organized the 2018 European RCE Meeting at UBS Vannes, which was a fantastic experience. She is also a novelist.

Dr Ayar Ata is a freelance researcher and linguist. Ayar is an active member of Sustainability Research Group at London South Bank University, and a member of International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM). He serves the IASFM-Working Group as a blog commissioning author, and he is a member of the editorial board of the Displaced Voices Journal. Ayar, has first-hand refugee experience and settled in London in the beginning of the 1990s. Advocating positive social integration and inclusion, Ayar now describes himself a Kurdish Londoner. Ayar studied forced migration and international human rights at University of East London (UEL) in 2009, and inspired by his experience at UEL he continued his dream advanced study and gained his PhD in the same field at London South Bank University in April 2017.

In his PhD study Ayar highlights the positive agency within refugee voices and experiences and explains the shifting position of refugee from victim to active and productive citizen, and Ayar further argues for fair access to quality education and training for all refugees and migrants as a stepping stone for achieving their social equality and inclusion within host communities, and for preventing the increasing under-employment and unemployment among refugee and migrant communities in London. As a human rights activist, Ayar has also helped to establish a small voluntary group called Maheen Project in Croydon south London. This project is supporting unaccompanied refugee children to settle successfully in London.