Main Speakers

The Speakers

• William Ayers
  
  

  William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and founder of both the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society, teaches courses in interpretive and qualitative research, urban school change, and teaching and the modern predicament. A graduate of the University of Michigan, the Bank Street College of Education, and Teachers College, Columbia University, Ayers has written extensively about social justice, democracy and education, the political and cultural contexts of schooling, and the meaning-making and ethical purposes of students and families and teachers. His articles have appeared in many journals including the Harvard Educational Review, the Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, Rethinking Schools, the Nation, the New York Times and the Cambridge Journal of Education.

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• Mary Kalantzis
  
  

  Dr Mary Kalantzis is Dean of the College of Education and Professor of Education, Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois Urbana Campaign, USA. She also is an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, attached to the Globalism Institute and Research Director of the Knowledge Design Forum. She was the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education, Language and Community Services at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia from 1997-2003, the President of the Australian Council of Deans of Education from 2000-2004 and an inaugural member of the Australian National Institute for Quality Teaching and School Leadership 2004–2005. She has also been a Commissioner of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Chair of the Queensland Ethnic Affairs Ministerial Advisory Committee and a member of the Australia Council’s Community Cultural Development Board. Her academic research and writing, crosses a number of disciplines, including history, linguistics, education and sociology; and examines themes as varied as Australian immigration, leadership and workplace change, professional learning, pedagogy and literacy learning. With Bill Cope, she is co-author of a number of books, including: 'The Powers of Literacy', Falmer Press, London, 1993, 'Productive Diversity', Pluto Press, Sydney, 1997; 'A Place in the Sun: Re-Creating the Australian Way of Life', Harper Collins, Sydney, 2000; 'Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures', Routledge, London, 2000; and 'Learning by Design', Victorian Schools Innovation Commission, Melbourne, 2005.

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• Jan Nederveen Pieterse
  
  

  Jan Nederveen Pieterse is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and specializes in globalization, development studies and cultural studies. He has been a visiting professor in Brazil, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden and Thailand. In addition, he lectures in many countries and is associate editor of several journals (Futures, Globalizations, European Journal of Social Theory, Ethnicities, Third Text, Journal of Social Affairs). Recent books are Ethnicities and Global Multiculture: Pants for an Octopus (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), Globalization or Empire? (Routledge, 2004), Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003) and Development Theory: Deconstructions/ Reconstructions (Sage, 2001). URL http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jnp/www/

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• Manfred B. Steger
  
  

  Manfred B. Steger is Professor of Global Studies and Academic Director of the Globalism Institute at RMIT University. He is also Program Leader of ‘Globalization and Culture’, in the Global Cities Institute at RMIT University. In addition, he is Senior Research Fellow at the Globalization Research Center in Honolulu, Hawai’i, and an affiliated faculty member with the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawai’i-Manoa. He has delivered many lectures on globalization, ideology, and nonviolence in the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Australia. Comprised of 14 books, dozens of articles and book chapters, and numerous reviews, Professor Steger’s academic work has been cited widely in the pertinent literature. His study Globalism: The New Market Ideology (Rowman & Littelfield, 2002) won the 2003 Michael Harrington Award of the New Political Science Section of the American Political Science Association. He has been a consultant on globalization for the U.S. State Department and an advisor on a U.S. Public Television series on the rise and fall of socialism. Favorable reviews of his work have appeared in numerous academic journals including the American Political Science Review and International Affairs. Professor Steger serves on several editorial boards of academic journals as well as on the advisory boards of several globalization research centers around the world. He has been a recipient of research grants from many institutions, including the U.S. National Endowment of the Humanities. His latest book project (in progress) is The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the War on Terror (under contract with Oxford University Press). Two of his latest journal articles are From Market Globalism to Imperial Globalism: Ideology and American Power After 9/11, Globalizations, vol. 2 no. 1, 2005, pp. 31-46 and Ideologies of Globalization, Journal of Political Ideologies, vol. 10, no. 1, 2005, pp. 11-30.

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