Biography

I am Emeritus Professor of International Education at the University of Birmingham, UK. My background is in teaching at primary, secondary and teacher education levels, in Mauritius and Malaysia as well as UK. Research and consultancy interests lie in the broad field of education governance and equity, but with a particular focus on conflict, extremism and security across a range of international contexts. This involves consultancy and evaluation work in capacity development, in rights, citizenship and school democracy, to build education for resilience and social cohesion, particularly in contexts of fragility. Research in the area of extremism has included interviewing former extremists (far right and Islamist) about their family backgrounds, and evaluating a project on mentoring Muslim prisoners. After previous books on Education and Conflict: Complexity and Chaos (2004) and Educating against Extremism (2008), in 2014 I published Unsafe Gods: Security, Secularism and Schooling. Edited books include Gender, Religion and Education (2014) and The Contested Role of Education in Conflict and Fragility (2015). A 2017 substantive report was on Post conflict Reconstruction and Transitional Justice, for ICTJ, New York, and two reports (2018 and 2019) have been written for the EU Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN).

I am a Director of the social enterprise ConnectFutures, which is engaged in community based solutions to extremism and exploitation, working with the police, and training hard-to-reach youth. We have developed on-line and face-to-face training programmes for schools and colleges on the UK government’s Prevent strategy and on connections between extremism and knife crime. I have worked with UNESCO and OSCE on developing manuals relating to preventing violent extremism and countering racism, and with GIZ on social cohesion in Sri Lanka and on gender in Afghanistan. I was on the Board of UNICEF UK for 6 years, and am currently on the Boards of the Africa Educational Trust/Street Child and the Georg-Ekert Institute for international textbook research. In 2014 I was given the Sir Brian Urquhart award for service to the UN and its goals by a UK citizen.