Plenary Speakers and Panelists

The World Universities Forum will feature plenary sessions by some of the world’s leading thinkers and innovators in the field, as well as numerous parallel presentations by researchers and practitioners.

Garden Conversations

Plenary Speakers will make formal 30-minute presentations. They will also participate in 60-minute Garden Conversations – unstructured sessions that allow delegates a chance to meet the speakers and talk with them informally about the issues arising from their presentation. Please return to this page for regular updates.

The Speakers

Ronald Barnett

Ronald Barnett is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. He is a recognized authority on the conceptual and theoretical understanding of the university and higher education. His books, several of which have won prizes and have been translated into other languages, include The Idea of Higher Education, Higher Education: A Critical Business, Realizing the University in an age of supercomplexity, Beyond All Reason: Living with Ideology in the University, and A Will to Learn: Being a Student in an Age of Uncertainty (all published by McGraw-Hill/ Open University Press). His latest book is Being a University (Routledge – January 2011). Ronald Barnett has held senior positions at the Institute of Education, including that of Pro-Director for Longer Term Strategy and was also, for seven years, a Dean. He is a past Chair of the Society for Research into Higher Education, and has recently served as a Special Adviser to the House of Commons Select Committee Inquiry into Universities and Students. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the Society for Research into Higher Education and is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and Visiting Professor at universities in China and Australia.  He also acts as a consultant, and has worked with most of the national organizations in the UK and many individual universities, including the University of the West Indies and the TATA University Institute of Social Sciences in India. He has been awarded a higher doctorate of the University of London, is an Academician of Social Sciences and was the recipient of the inaugural ‘Distinguished Researcher’ prize of the European Association for Institutional Research (EAIR).  He has been a keynote speaker in over 30 countries.

Fatma Gök

Fatma Gök received her bachelor’s degree from the Department of Education Sciences at the University of Ankara and received her graduate education and PhD, in 1987, from Colombia University, USA. She works as a professor at the Department of Educational Sciences at Bo?aziçi University. Her academic work focuses on education policy, social foundations of education, gender in education and comparative education. She has published on the right to education, discrimination in education, the relationship between social justice and education and neoliberal policies in education. She was part of the editorial collectives of the journal “Socialist Feminist Kaktüs,” between the years 1988-1992 and the feminist magazine “Pazartesi,” between 1999-2001. She acted as the coordinator of the Education Philosophy Working Group at the Democratic Education Congress of the Teacher’s Union in 1998 and of the Working Group on the Right to Education in the Face of Global Assaults at the 5^th Democratic Education Congress, again organized by the Teacher’s Union E?itim Sen. Her “Survey of Teacher Profiles”(together with R?fat Okaçabol) was published in 1998. She was the editor of “Education in 75 years” published by the Turkish Economic and Social History Association. Her comic-book, and guide, “Towards a Educational Environment Respectful of Human Rights,” prepared together with Alper ?ahin, takes a critical look to school and is used as a resource for the efforts to bring a democracy to schools. “Education in Multicultural Societies – Perspectives from Turkey and Sweden,” prepared together with Marie Carlson and Anika Rabo, was published by I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd. In 2007. Recently she convened the XIV. World Congress of Comparative Education Societies held in Istanbul during June 2010.

Barbara M. Kehm

Barbara M. Kehm is a professor of higher education research and head of the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER) at the University of Kassel (Germany). One of her tasks has been the creation of an international research oriented Master Programme “Higher Education Research and Development” which is running since 2004. She has worked as a post-doc researcher at the University of Kassel from 1990 until 1996. From 1996 onwards she was active as a senior researcher at the Institute of Higher Education Research of the University of Halle-Wittenberg and was its research coordinator from 2001 onwards. In 2003 she became professor at Kassel University and managing director of INCHER in 2004. She was a member of the EAIR Executive Board and the German Society for Higher Education Research. She is currently the Secretary of the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER), a European based but global association of researchers in the field of higher education. In addition she is a member of the editorial board of four international higher education journals. She has carried out several large-scale projects for international organisations such as UNESCO, the OECD, the European Commission, and the Council of Europe. Her publications include more than 20 monographs and more than 200 journal articles and book chapters. Among her publications in English, she has edited the volumes: Reforming University Governance. Changing Conditions for Research in Four European Countries (with U. Lanzendorf) (2006), Looking Back to Look Forward. Analyses of Higher Education Research after the Turn of the Millennium (2007), The European Higher Education Area: Perspectives on a Moving Target (with J. Huisman and B. Stensaker) (2009), and University Rankings, Diversity and the New Landscape of Higher Education (with B. Stensaker) (2009).

Mary Kalantzis – Panelist

Mary Kalantzis is Dean of the College of Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She was formerly Dean of the Faculty of Education, Language and Community Services at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, and President of the Australian Council of Deans of Education. With Bill Cope, she is co-author or editor of: Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures, Routledge, 2000; New Learning: Elements of a Science of Education, Cambridge University Press, 2008; Ubiquitous Learning, University of Illinois Press, 2009; and Literacies, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2011.

António Nóvoa

António Nóvoa is Rector of the University of Lisbon. He earned a Ph. D. in Education at Geneva University (Switzerland) and a Ph. D. in History at Sorbonne University (Paris IV). Main advisor for Education of the Portuguese President of the Republic (1996-1998), he has been the President of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (2000-2003). António Nóvoa has been Visiting Scholar or Visiting Professor at several universities (Geneva, Paris V, Wisconsin, Oxford, Columbia-New York, São Paulo, etc.). He is the author of 150 titles (books and articles) published in 12 countries, mainly in the fields of History of Education, Comparative Education and Teacher Education.

Marianna Papastephanou

Dr Marianna Papastephanou has studied and taught at the University of Cardiff, UK. She has also studied and researched in Berlin, Germany. She is currently teaching Philosophy of Education in the Department of Education at the University of Cyprus. Her research interests include political philosophy, the ‘modern vs postmodern’ divide, utopia, the Frankfurt School and epistemological, linguistic and ethical issues in education (e.g. the Idea of the University, Education as Bildung, etc). She has written articles on the above topics, edited a collection of essays by Karl-Otto Apel (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), and she is the author of: Educated Fear and Educated Hope (Rotterdam, Sense Publishers, 2009); and Eccentric Cosmopolitanism and a Globalized World (Boulder, Paradigm, 2012).

Chryssi Vitsilaki – Panelist

Chryssi Vitsilaki completed undergraduate studies in Trinity College, Hartford, Ct. and received her MA and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, Illinois, USA. She is currently Professor in the Department of Pre-School Education and Educational Design of the University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece. She is also the Director of the Department’s post-graduate program “Gender and New Educational and Employment Environments in the Information Age” which is the only masters program in Greece offered through e-learning, and which received by the European Commission the “2009 Award for Quality in e-Learning”. Her academic work has focused on the issues of gender and of new forms of education, new pedagogies and the role of technology in the learning processes, on which she has published 10 books and some 50 articles. She has served as elected Dean of the School of the Humanities for a two year term and also as elected Vice-Rector of Finance and Development for the last four year term, at the University of the Aegean. From this position she was a member of the Greek Rector’s Association and served on multiple advisory committees regarding university funding, research and development, as well as on issues regarding education, such as teacher training and teacher pedagogical certification, university entrance, etc. She is presently Secretary for Education of the Greek Socialist Party, and highly involved in the undergoing educational reform and especially the pending reform of higher education in Greece.