Learning communities : schools, parents and challenges for wider community involvement in schools

This presentation will focus, for the most part, on a project of parental involvement in a state primary school located in a predominantly working-class area in a Mediterranean country. It will draw briefly on qualitative empirical work carried out with a colleague (Carmel Borg). The presentation gives an account of the socio-economic context of the school, and foregrounds, through empirical data culled from transcribed semi-structured interviews, the voices of parents, administrators, school-council members and teachers. It will be argued that, if this project is to develop into a genuine exercise in democratic participation, parents must begin to be conceived of not as “adjuncts”, but “subjects”. The parents interviewed in this empirical work see themselves as such, and derive confidence from the fact that, at the time of the interview, their claims and recommendations were translating into concrete developments. The second part of the presentation will discuss the issue of parental involvement in schools within the context of a wider discussion on ‘changing the face of the school’ by helping it develop into a community learning centre. Insights from the work of Paulo Freire and his Education Secretariat, when he served as Education Secretary in the Municipal Government of São Paulo, Brazil, and from SMED in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will be drawn upon.peer-reviewe

Multiple audiences: revisiting historical film reception

Keynote for the 2013 ECREA Film Studies Conference, Lund, Sweden, 8-9 November 201

A new paradigm for monetary policy?

Keynote speech to Conference “Twenty Years of Transition – Experiences and Challenges”. Central Bank of Slovakia. Bratislava, 3 May 201

Deathly constructions/Beckett's thanatographies

Keynote address to the conference Beckett and Death, University of Northampton, December 3rd 2006

GINI DP 8: The Ideological and Political Roots of American Inequality

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Out of Touch: On the sensorial in the Historical Interpretation of Japanese Lacquer

Essay based on keynote speech at "Crossing Borders" conference held at V&A Museum in 2009 suggesting multi-sensorial approach to the study of Japanese lacque

Best practice, best teaching

Keynote address discussing examples from my own, colleagues, and attendees practice. Conference participants worked in groups to share and build upon their existing teaching and learning strategies

What we do with words, and what they do with us

This is an invited paper based on the keynote presentation that Professor Ralf St Clair made at the 2019 Australian Council for Adult Literacy Conference in Sydney, Australia on 4 October

the iconography of Lumumba in the arts and the work of Raoul Peck

A two-days bilingual international conference (February 18-19, 2016), organized by the University of Antwerp,1 with keynote speaker Raoul Peck and Johannes Fabian. Organisation: Matthias De Groof and Kathleen Gyssels, Antwerp University