Professor Mario Novelli is Professor in the Political Economy of Education at the Centre for International Education, University of Sussex and Deans Distinguished Research Fellow (2021-2024) at the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia.
Whilst the current COVID19 pandemic has brought home to many citizens in the Global North the fragility of their existence, including a lack of resilience in education systems and exacerbation of widespread learning inequalities, in the Global South this is but one more crisis in a long list that has punctuated daily lives and educational journeys. This seminar seeks to go beyond narrow understandings of education and its relationship to economy and society by critically exploring the complex ways that education systems and state education policies and practices, are linked to war, peace and crises, not merely as victims but also as drivers and catalysts. In doing so I will seek to highlight that education systems and actors have agency – they are capable of producing conflict ridden and crises prone systems as well as radically transforming them – and that policy and practice matters in the pursuit of more socially just and equitable educational systems and a fairer and better world. Drawing on evidence from a series of research projects, the session will critically reflect on the ways in which the relationship between education, conflict and crisis has been constructed, nationally and transnationally, as a field of research and practice. It will also highlight the ongoing need for critically informed research on the education/conflict /crisis relationship that can decouple itself from the hegemony of Global North funders, agencies and actors and the inherent biases and injustices within dominant lenses, priorities and perspectives.