2023-2024 Officers
SIG Chair
Shireen Keyl
shireen.keyl@usu.edu
Shireen Keyl, Ph.D.
Shireen’s research interests are in nonformal education in the Middle East region, refugee and migrant education, and critical theories. She utilizes decolonizing and critical praxis and engages in activist-oriented research with non-governmental organizations especially as it relates to EFL education and decolonizing and community-led research. She has focused on refugee and migrant populations’ ways of knowing and how that intersects with EFL education. Her research and teaching, critical in their orientation toward attempts to work for social justice, stem from her experiences as an educator in the United States and in the Middle East. She was a Fulbright scholar in Amman, Jordan in AY 2018-2019 and has completed fieldwork in Lebanon, Turkey, and Iran as well. Shireen’s teaching role includes Foundations of Education and Diversity in Education for USU’s Statewide campuses. Shireen fulfills her service role as a mentor for the Statewide Faculty-to-Student Mentoring Program. She also serves as a Fulbright application reviewer, a board member for an NGO in Amman, Jordan, and as a tutor for the Utah Refugee Network in Salt Lake City, Utah.
SIG Program Chair
Sandra Candel
sandra.candel@unlv.edu
Sandra Candel obtained her doctoral degree in Curriculum and Instruction, with an emphasis in Cultural Studies, International Education, and Multicultural Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her research focuses on the educational trajectories of U.S.-born transnational students who were forced to attend schools in Mexico due to parental deportation. She is also interested in the importance of deported mothers’ advocacy to improve their children’s academic opportunities. Particularly, Dr. Candel is committed to the academic success of transnational students through the development of transnational-sensitive teaching practices. Dr. Candel holds a Master’s degree in International Education with an emphasis in Peace Education from Drexel University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Business from California State University, Fullerton.
Secretary
TBA
Membership Assistants
Newsletter Co-Editors
LuzKarime Calle Diaz
Luzkarime lives and works in Colombia. She is a language teacher educator and research advisor. She has worked in a variety of local and national educational projects to contribute to the improvement of bilingual education in her country. She was the coordinator of the design of the National Suggested Curriculum for English learning, with a focus on peacebuilding and sustainability. Her current research situates at the intersection of Discourse Studies and Peace Education, with a special interest in critical and positive discourse analysis, critical literacies, and children’s literature for peacebuilding. She has published relevant chapters and articles about the role of language in peacebuilding processes, positive discourse analysis in language learning and teacher education, representation and peacebuilding in children’s literature, literacies and coloniality resistance in Latin America, among others. She also belongs to the Womyn Peace Collective, based in St. Louis, with whom she has co-written and published the bilingual children’s book “Un Día de las Madres por la Paz – A Mothers Day for Peace: a herstory”.
Tina Ahmadi
Tina is a PhD student at Ball State University in Indiana, studying educational psychology. She currently researches restorative practices in classroom settings and received a Cohen Peace Grant to aid this work. Prior to starting her academic career, she taught science at the K-12 level and is passionate about any and all educational research that can improve student learning both in academic subjects as well as personal growth in areas that are not always measured by tests (such as conflict resolution). During her time as a classroom teacher, she served on the school equity team for multiple years and facilitated conversations amongst staff members. Tina holds a dual Masters from Ball State University in Education and Biology and B.S. in Biology and Society from Cornell University. She looks forward to learning about the amazing work of peace education scholars as she works with Luzkarime to highlight and share their work.
Webmasters
Communications Specialist
2020-2021 Margareth Lafontant: lafontantm@aol.com
2019-2020 Shelley Wong: swong1@gmu.edu
2018-2019 Ilham Nasser: ilham@iiit.org
2017-2018 linda picket: pickettl@gvsu.edu
2016-2017 candice c. carter: ccarter@peacemaker.st
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