EDUCATION IN CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES
Special Interest Group, Comparative and International Education Society
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2023-2024 SIG Leadership
Emily Dunlop (Co-Chair, 2023/2024 Conferences)
Emily is a postdoctoral associate at Cornell University in the Government Department. She holds a PhD in International Education from New York University. Her research focuses on the relationships between politics, education, and perceptions of inequality in post-war contexts, specifically Burundi. She has also conducted fieldwork in Rwanda and Kenya. Emily has volunteered with the Education in Conflict and Emergencies SIG for the past two years – starting first as a unit planner before transitioning to the secretariat position for the 2022 CIES conference.
Sheena Harris (Unit Planner)
Sheena Harris is a doctoral candidate in Comparative and International Development Education at the University of Minnesota. For her dissertation research, she is interested in post-conflict history education and historical memory in Timor-Leste. She has previously taught English as a second and foreign language to immigrants and university level students in the United States and high school students in Italy. She speaks Indonesian and can understand some Portuguese and Tetun, has experience in Thailand,
Cambodia, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Italy and Portugal, and currently devotes some of her time to volunteering virtually with the Asia Justice and Rights Society (AJAR), a non-profit dedicated to human rights and transitional justice in the Asia-Pacific region.
Myuri Komaragiri (Secretariat)
Myuri is a policy analyst with the Government of Canada, a PhD student at OISE University of Toronto in Higher Education, where she leads the Education, Conflict and Peacebuilding Interest Group, and lecturer in International Development Studies. Her research interests are in the role of higher education in the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, which stems from field experience on education projects in Guatemala, Morocco, and Jordan. Last year, Myuri served as a Unit Planner for the EiCE SIG. She looks forward to supporting the SIG with growing and engaging its membership, and ultimately supporting a meaningful dialogue around education in conflict and emergencies at CIES 2023.
Arnela Čolić (Co-Chair, 2024/2025 Conferences)
Arnela Čolić is a third year doctoral fellow in the International and Comparative Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Arnela is interested in the role of education in post-conflict state-(re)building, particularly in areas affected by ethnic violence. She integrates theories and debates in political science and sociology to empirically examine education structures in power-sharing, post-war democracies. Prior to her doctoral studies, she completed an M.A. in International Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University and a B.A. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Before her graduate studies, Arnela worked as a teacher of English as a foreign language (TEFL) with the US Peace Corps in Kosovo. She currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Current Issues in Comparative Education journal and the co-chair for the Education in Conflict and Emergencies Special Interest Group of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES).
Christiana Kallon Kelly (Former Co-Chair)
Christiana Kallon Kelly received a PhD in Education, Culture, and Society with a certificate in Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests focus on education, youth, gender, and politics in Africa. More specifically, she examines schools as sites of cultural and political transformation for African youth in the past and present. Christiana has published in the Journal of Modern African Studies and Africa Policy Journal. As a UCLA Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, she will explore the legacies of gender and colonial secondary schooling in Africa and the African Diaspora through archival and ethnographic research on the Annie Walsh Memorial School in Freetown, which is the first girls’ secondary school in West Africa. In addition, she will finish her manuscript entitled “Kwame Nkrumah, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and James Aggrey: African Students and Teachers of Black Liberation, 1920-1945.” Christiana was born in Sierra Leone and raised in Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda, and Bangladesh before immigrating to the United States in 2007
Andrew Swindell (Former Co-Chair)
Andrew Swindell is a doctoral candidate in International and Comparative Education at the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, UCLA. His research interests include school choice policy in the United States and Non-State schooling in emergency contexts Myanmar. He has worked as a foreign aid practitioner in Liberia and a K-12 teacher in Thailand and Myanmar. He holds a master’s degree in education from the University of Missouri and a
bachelor’s degree in economics from Bucknell University. Andrew can be reached at aswindell@ucla.edu
Thank you to everyone who has served in EiCE Leadership
Dr. Mieke Lopes Cardozo (Founder & Former Co-Chair)
Dr. Mieke Lopes Cardozo (SIG Co-Chair) is assistant professor at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research of the University of Amsterdam. She has an academic background in International Relations, Conflict Studies, Latin American Studies (University of Utrecht) and International Development Studies (University of Amsterdam). Mieke coordinates several international research projects and consortia, all focused on the role of education for peacebuilding
in conflict-affected regions. Her research revolves around education’s role in social justice and peacebuilding, with a specific interest in teachers (training, agency), gender, and (non)formal peace building education focused on youth agency. Geographically, her research focuses on Bolivia, Indonesia, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Mieke lectures in several BA and MA courses within the International Development Studies department at the University of Amsterdam, including the MA course The Politics of Education, Conflict and International Development. She is involved in GLOBED, an EU Erasmus Mundus Plus-funded joint Masters on Education Policies for Global Development, a board member of the Amsterdam Research Centre on Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS) and a member of the Working Group on Education and Fragility of the International Network for Education in Emergencies.
Samah Al-Sabbagh (Former Co-Chair)
Mrs. Samah Al-Sabbagh is a Research Specialist at Reach Out to Asia (ROTA) a program of Education Above All Foundation. She established the research section and is currently involved in researching different topics about education in development and post crisis context. Previously, Samah was a Senior Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University Qatar and conducted extensive research in that capacity and in her role as a Senior
Educational Researcher at Barwa Knowledge. She held senior management positions at the ministry as well as national and international schools. As part of her contributions to education, she published papers and presented at national and international conferences. Samah is an active member of PTAs, served as a member of board of directors and chaired a Parent Advisory Council. Samah holds a Masters in Educational Leadership and currently pursuing her PhD. She inspires to have the opportunity to contribute to influential, reforming environments, to guide and create generations ready to lead and build the future.
Dr. S. Garnett Russell (Founder & Former Co-Chair)
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Susan “Garnett” Russell is an Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Education at Columbia University, Teachers College. Her research focuses on areas linked to education and conflict, transitional justice, human rights education, citizenship, and gender in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Rwanda, South Africa, and Burundi. She directs the George Clement Bond Center for African Education. Currently, she is carrying out research
with a team on access to education for urban refugees in Ecuador, Lebanon, Kenya and other countries in the global south. In addition, she serves as a co-chair of the CIES SIG for Education, Conflict, and Emergencies, co-chair of the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) Education Policy Working Group, and is also a board member for the Journal on Education in Emergencies. Professor Russell has a PhD from Stanford University, an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a BA from Stanford University.
Dr. Diana Rodríguez Gómez (Former Co-Chair)
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Diana Rodríguez Gómez is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Universidad de Los Andes in her hometown Bogotá, Colombia. Her academic and teaching interests gravitate around the intersections of violence and education in Latin America, especially in countries affected by the War on Drugs. Through an ethnographic approach that includes visual methods, her research delves into the social processes that link global and national policies with classroom practices in contexts affected by violence. More generally, her areas
of research include forced migration, armed conflict and education, education in emergencies, and the anthropology of education. Dr. Rodríguez Gómez holds an Ed.D. in International Educational Development with an emphasis on Human Rights and Peace Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Elisheva Cohen (Former Co-Chair)
Elisheva (Elly) Cohen is a Postdoctoral Fellow in International Issues and Sustainable Development at the Indiana University Center for the Study of Global Change. She holds a PhD from the University of Minnesota in Comparative and International Development Education, where she focused on education in conflict and crisis, particularly in the Middle East. Her dissertation research used ethnographic methods to explore the experiences of
inclusion and belonging among Syrian refugee youth in non-formal educational spaces in Jordan.
Adeline Ong
Former Submissions Coordinator
Andrew McCartney
Former Digital Media Coordinator
Anne Corwith
Former Unit Planner
Celia Reddick
Former Awards Coordinator
Chris Henderson
Former Unit Planner
Cyril Own Brandt
Former Submissions Coordinator
Dr. Daniel Couch
Former Newsletter Coordinator
Gretchen Wesche
Former Digital Media Coordinator
Inga Storen
Former Webmaster
Julia Lerch
Founding Member and Former Secretariat
Kevin Nascimento
Former Unit Planner
Martha Hewison
Masuma Moravej
Former Awards Coordinator
Michelle Reddy
Former Newsletter Coordinator
Petrina Davidson
Former Unit Planner
Tracie Jarrard
Former Newsletter & Social Media Coordinator
Yasemin Rodriguez Corzo
Former Unit Planner