Julie Allan
is Professor of Equity and Inclusion at the University of Birmingham, UK where she was formerly Head of the School of Education. Julie’s research focuses on inclusion, disability studies and children’s rights and encompasses both empirical and theoretical work. She has been an expert adviser on policy, practice and research to governments, NGO s and Council of Europe. Julie Allan and Valerie Harwood co-edited, together with Clara Jørgensen, The Routledge World Yearbook in Education: Schooling, Governance and Inequalities (2020, Routledge). Her latest books are On the Self: Discourses of Mental Health and Education (with Valerie Harwood, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and Students, Teachers, Families, and a Socially Just Education: Rewriting the Grammar of Schooling to Unsettle Identities (with Francesca Peruzzo, Lived Places Publishing, 2023).
Karen E. Andreasen
holds a Ph.D. in Education and is Associate Professor in Education at the Department of Culture & Learning, Aalborg University, Denmark. She is a member of the research group Centre for Education Policy Research and conducts research within the area of education, assessment and history of education. Her main interests are questions of socialization, social mobility and processes of marginalization, in- and exclusion in different educational contexts in contemporary as well as historical perspectives. In her recent research, she has focused on schooling in times of crisis in contemporary and historical perspectives, education and transnational cooperation and influence.
Michael W. Apple
is the John Bascom Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A former elementary and secondary school teacher and past-president of a teachers union, he has worked with educational systems, governments, universities, unions, and activist and dissident groups throughout the world to democratize educational research, policy, and practice. Professor Apple has written extensively on the politics of educational reform and on education for social justice. Among his recent books are: Can Education Change Society?; The Struggle for Democracy in Education: Lessons from Social Realities; and the enlarged 4th edition of his classic text Ideology and Curriculum.
is Associate Professor at the Institute of Linguistics and Language Technology of the University of Malta. His research lies at the interface of linguistics with philosophy, cognitive psychology and critical theory. He is the author of numerous papers in the fields of pragmatics and (critical) discourse studies and is currently serving as special issue editor for the Journal of Pragmatics. His recent publications include: Online Hate Speech in the European Union: A Discourse-Analytic Perspective (Springer, 2017, with Fabienne H. Baider & Sharon Millar), Pragmatics at Its Interfaces (Mouton de Gruyter, 2017) and Current Issues in Intercultural Pragmatics (John Benjamins, 2017, with Istvan Kecskes).
Thomas Barow
is Professor in Education at Örebro University, Sweden. Before that, he worked at several universities in Sweden and Germany. Thomas holds a Ph.D. in Special Education from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. His dissertation investigated the social conditions of people categorized as “feeble-minded” in Sweden 1916–1945. In addition to his historical interests, his research areas extend to inclusive education, special education needs policies, special educational categorisation, and particularly the schooling of children with intellectual disability. In recent years, he has edited several books and published numerous articles and chapters in edited books.
Bjørn Hamre
holds a Ph.D. in History and Education at the Section of Education and is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Hamre has been the chairman of the Danish Section of the Nordic Network of Disability Research (NNDR). His research interests revolve around inclusion and exclusion in educational practices from a historical and sociological perspective. He has published in journals like Nordic Journal of Social Research, International Journal of Inclusive Education and Paedagogica Historica. Hamre is the co-editor of Testing and Inclusive Schooling: International Challenges and Opportunities (Routledge, 2018).
Anders Høg Hansen
is Associate Professor in media and communication studies at Malmö University, Sweden where he works primarily on the M.A. in Communication for Development. He has an M.A. in Cultural Studies: History and Theory from University of East London, and a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Nottingham Trent University. His research of recent engages with life writing, migration and memory in a variety of genres. A monograph for Palgrave titled Mix Tape
Elena Iwanski
worked as a social worker with unaccompanied minor refugees in Switzerland for several years. She completed the European Master in Migration and Intercultural Relations (EMMIR). The program’s mobility path allowed her to study in Germany, Norway and Uganda as well as to intern on Mayotte (Comoros). The protracted situation of Congolese and Rwandan refugees and their practices of resilience on Mayotte formed the subject of her Master thesis. She currently works for an Ugandan NGO at Kiryandongo Refugee settlement.
Fred Jenga
earned his doctorate in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He is an interdisciplinary scholar who researches politics and religion, especially in Africa. He has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Tangaza University College in Kenya, Shanghai University China, and is currently a visiting scholar at Stonehill College in the USA. His work is included in journals such as Journal of Communication and Religion and Dialogues in Social Justice: An Adult Education Journal.
Jesper Vaczy Kragh
holds a Ph.D. in Medical History from Medical Museion, Institute of Public Health, University of Copenhagen and is senior researcher at The Copenhagen Centre for Health Research in the Humanities (CoRe), University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He has worked on a number of research projects on the history of forensic psychiatry, Nordic psychology, drug abuse in the 19th and early 20th century and the history of vulnerable groups. He is author of the monograph Lobotomy Nation: The History of Psychosurgery and Psychiatry in Denmark (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), and co-editor of Social Class and Mental Illness in Northern Europe (Routledge, 2020). Recent Danish books on intellectual disability: IQ 75 (Gads Forlag, 2022) and Experiences of Power (University Press of Southern Zealand, 2020).
Inger Marie Lid
holds a Ph.D. in Contemporary Theology and Ethics from the University of Oslo, Faculty of Theology and is Professor of Public Health and Rehabilitation at VID Specialized University, Faculty of Health Studies. Her research interests include inter-disciplinary disability studies, citizenship, human rights, urban studies, universal design, co-production in research and ethics. Lid is the co-
Turið Nolsøe
is a Ph.D. fellow at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Communication, from where she holds her master’s degree in Rhetoric. Nolsøe’s research interests center around the intersection between biopolitics and geopolitics in traditional and alternative forms of public deliberation, focusing on discourses on reproductive and personal rights in the political relationship between Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Her forthcoming dissertation is on Danish journalism about Faroese abortion legislation as an analytic prism for contemporary discourse about the Danish kingdom.
Francesca Peruzzo
is a Research Fellow in Educational Equity and Policy at the School of Education, University of Birmingham. Her research interests lie in the intersection between politics, policy, education governance and inclusion, using in particular post-structural and decolonial approaches. She has published widely on ableism and higher education policy, and she is currently researching decolonial and inclusive governance in the Global South and North and its implications for equity of opportunities in a post-pandemic education. She is the author of the book Students, Teachers, Families, and a Socially Just Education: Rewriting the Grammar of Schooling to Unsettle Identities (with Julie Allan) published by Lived Places Publishing.
Dimitris Serafis
is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts, Center for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG) of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. His research interests lie at the intersection of critical discourse studies, social semiotics and multimodality, and argumentation studies, with his current focus being on topics such as racism, hate speech, populism and authoritarianism. His recent publications include the monograph Authoritarianism on the Front Page: Multimodal Discourse and Argumentation in Times of Multiple Crises in Greece (John Benjamins, 2023) and the thematic section “Critical perspectives on migration in discourse and communication” (Studies in Communication Sciences, 2021; co-edited with Jolanta Drzewiecka & Sara Greco).
is Academic Program Chair of Screen Production at Murdoch University and a Western Australian Screen Award (WASA) winning director. He is a maternal descendent of the Minang-Wadjari Nyungars (Aboriginal peoples) of the South-West of Western Australia whilst his paternal family emigrated from post-war Russia. These rich and varied cultural backgrounds have allowed him, through his filmmaking, research and writing to explore culture, knowledge and diverse narratives. This is evident via his extensive film productions and academic writings – including The Forgotten, and Wadjemup: Black Prison – White Playground which were respectively awarded the Best Documentary at the 2003 WA Screen Awards, and Outstanding Achievement Feature Film – Factual at the 2014 WA Screen Awards.
Linda Steele
holds a Ph.D. in Law from The University of Sydney and is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology, Australia. Her research interests revolve around law’s role in enabling and redressing disabled people’s experiences of violence, segregation and institutionalisation. Steele is the author of Disability, Criminal Justice and Law (Routledge, 2020), and co-editor of Sites of Conscience: Place, Memory and the Project of Deinstitutionalization (UBC Press, forthcoming); The Legacies of Institutionalisation: Disability, Law and Policy in the ‘Deinstitutionalised’ Community (Hart Publishing, 2020); Normalcy and Disability: Intersections among Norms, Law, and Culture (Routledge, 2018).
Lisa Villadsen
holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from Northwestern University, USA, and is Professor of Rhetoric and Head of the Section of Rhetoric at the Department of Communication at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research interests revolve around contemporary political rhetoric, particularly issues of populism, rhetorical citizenship, and official apologies. Villadsen is the co-editor of Populist Rhetorics: Case Studies and a Minimalist Definition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022); The Rhetoric of Official Apologies: Critical Essays (Lexington Books, 2021); Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation (Penn State University Press, 2012); and Contemporary Rhetorical Citizenship: Purposes, Practices, and Perspectives (Leiden University Press, 2014).