“Mapping Peace Education,” a global research tool and initiative documenting and analyzing peace education efforts around the world, was launched with a special virtual forum on October 9, 2021.
The event was hosted by Micaela Segal de la Garza, Mapping Peace Education Coordinator, and featured a dialogue between Tony Jenkins, Coordinator of the Global Campaign for Peace Education, and Cecilia Barbieri, Chief of the UNESCO Section of Global Citizenship and Peace Education.
Tony and Cecilia were also joined by a panel of contributing researchers from around the world, including Loreta Castro (Philippines), Raj Kumar Dhungana (Nepal), Loizos Loukaidis (Cyprus), Tatjana Popovic (Serbia), and Ahmad Jawad Samsor (Afghanistan).
Launch Event Video
About “Mapping Peace Education”
Mapping Peace Education is a global research initiative of the Global Campaign for Peace Education conducted in partnership with several leading organizations engaged in peace education research and practice, this dynamic resource is designed for peace education researchers, donors, practitioners, and policy-makers who are looking for data and analysis on formal and non-formal peace education efforts in countries around the world to support the development of contextually relevant and evidence-based peace education to transform conflict, war, and violence. The project is envisioned as a go-to source for country-level documentation and analysis of peace education efforts. (For additional details, read the original press release here.)
Visit the Mapping Peace Education project website.The Launch Event
Event Host
Micaela Segal de la Garza is a multilingual educator who focuses on peace education and communication. Mica teaches Spanish at a comprehensive public high school in Houston and served as faculty advisor for their student-run yearbook staff and publication. Other classrooms include the great outdoors where she teaches children at a local nature center, and the global classroom where she coordinates projects with the Global Campaign for Peace Education. She’s a people-person who studied her Masters in International Peace, Conflict, and Development Studies at Universitat Jaume I in Spain, and continues learning with the International Institute on Peace Education.
Dialogue Participants
Cecilia Barbieri joined the Section of Global Citizenship and Peace Education at UNESCO as Chief in September 2019, coming from the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile, where she was in charge of the Education 2030 Section. Before joining UNESCO Santiago, she worked as Education Specialist with UNESCO since 1999, mainly in Africa and Asia. Prior to joining the organization, she worked in the field of technical and vocational training and institutional capacity building, and was engaged for many years in culture of peace, human rights, and intercultural education. A social sciences graduate from the University of Bologna, Italy, she continued education in international humanitarian law, education psychology and educational policy and planning.
Tony Jenkins PhD has 20+ years of experience directing, designing, and facilitating peacebuilding and international educational programs and projects in the fields of international development, peace studies, and peace education. Tony is the Managing Director of the International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE) and Coordinator of the Global Campaign for Peace Education (GCPE). He is also currently a Lecturer in the Program on Justice and Peace Studies at Georgetown University. Tony’s applied research is focused on examining the impacts and effectiveness of peace education methods and pedagogies in nurturing personal, social and political change and transformation.
Contributing Researchers
Loreta Castro, Ed. D. is considered one of the pioneers of peace education in the Philippines, having started her efforts to institutionalize peace education in the 1980s. Dr. Castro is the former president of Miriam College and it was under her term that the foundations of the Center for Peace Education (CPE), the peace arm of the school, were laid and eventually established.
Raj Kumar Dhungana is a peace education and governance expert from Nepal. He has long experience in teaching, the integration of peace education in national education systems, and promoting good governance. He has served in school, the government of Nepal, Save the Children, UNESCO, UNICEF, Tribhuvan University, Department of Conflict, Peace and Development, UN Office of the Disarmament Affairs, and UNDP in Nepal, South Asia and the Asia Pacific Region, and Kathmandu University, School of Education. He served as Co-Convener of IPRA in 2016-2018. He completed his PhD in 2018 from Kathmandu University specializing in school violence. Currently, he is working in the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Kathmandu as a Senior Advisor, associated with Kathmandu University as a visiting faculty member, and volunteering as an expert member of the Government of Nepal’s National Child Rights Council.
Loizos Loukaidis is the Director of the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR). He holds a BA in Primary Education (Aristotle University, Greece) and an MA in Peace Education (UPEACE, Costa Rica) and has extensive experience in the education sector both as a Primary School Teacher and a Peace Education activist, project coordinator, and researcher. In 2016 Loizos was appointed by the President of the Republic of Cyprus as a member of the Bi-communal Technical Committee on Education in the context of the ongoing peace negotiations. He is also the Coordinator of the ‘Imagine’ Project that brings together students and teachers from across the divide in Cyprus during school hours.
Tatjana Popovic is a director of Nansen Dialogue Centre Serbia and an experienced trainer within the conflict transformation field. Over the last 20 years, she facilitated a number of inter-ethnic dialogue seminars for teachers, ministries of education, and local authorities’ representatives in the Western Balkans, contributing to the reconciliation. The focus of her training is on Dialogue, Interactive Teaching Methodologies, Conflict Analysis Tools, and Mediation. Tatjana holds MA in Peace Studies from the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade and is a certified mediator.
Ahmad Jawad Samsor is the Peace Education Program Manager of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is also a Lecturer at American University of Afghanistan (AUAF).
