CHEN Qun was appointed UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education in April 2026. Leading a global team of 1,000 staff, he provides strategic vision and leadership in coordinating and monitoring the implementation of the Education 2030 Agenda to ensure education remains a top priority on the world’s political agenda. He began his career as a science scholar at East China Normal University (ECNU), a leading research institution, where he subsequently held senior leadership positions, serving as Vice-President from 2003 to 2012 and as President from 2012 to 2018. From 2017 to 2023, he served as Deputy Mayor of Shanghai, China, before becoming Vice-Chairman of the Shanghai Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. In these roles, he oversaw key portfolios, including education, social and legal affairs, contributing to the advancement of Shanghai’s education system. With a PhD in Physics, he is internationally recognized for his contributions to scientific research and interdisciplinary sciences.

CHENG Kai Ming is Emeritus Professor at the University of Hong Kong. He was Dean of Education, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Senior Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor of the University. He taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education as Visiting Professor 1996-2006. Trained as a mathematician, he was a school teacher and a principal before he pursued doctoral study at the London Institute of Education. His research started with rural villages in China, India and Africa. He worked on numerous projects with international organizations – World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF, and ADB. He focuses on changes in society and their challenges to Education, with special attention to the Science of Learning. Recently, he has visited many schools in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, Macau and Malaysia. His attention is on AI application in education, with emphasis on the human dimension.

LEE Kyungmee is an Associate Professor specializing in Qualitative Educational Research and Sociology of Educational Technology at Seoul National University in South Korea. Previously, she worked in the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University in the UK. Her scholarship critically examines the rhetorical claims surrounding the democratization of education through emerging technologies, revealing the complexities and limitations these technologies introduce to educational contexts. Her current research program examines the complex relationships between human subjects and non-human agents, such as generative AI, in both pedagogical and research contexts. She serves as a co-chair for the UNESCO Chair Programme in Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Education and as an Associate Editor for the Internet and Higher Education.

Mir MATIN is Manager of the Geospatial, Climate and Infrastructure Analytics Programme at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), where he leads a multidisciplinary team applying Earth observation, geospatial analysis, and climate modelling to support evidence-based decision-making on water security, disaster risk, and environmental sustainability. With over three decades of experience, Dr. Matin's work spans disaster risk management, land cover monitoring, and integrated water resources management in some of the world's most climate-vulnerable regions. Situated at the intersection of satellite data science and human well-being, his research explores how geospatial technologies and AI can be harnessed to produce environmental intelligence for sustainable development. He also focuses on generating rigorous analytical evidence to expose how the burdens of technological progress fall disproportionately on the world's most vulnerable communities — advancing environmental and technological justice in the context of global development and the AI revolution.

Dennis NGUYEN is a Senior Researcher in Digital Literacy and Methods at Utrecht University and the AI Methods Lead at the Inclusive AI Lab. His research tackles how society understands artificial intelligence and datafication, the dynamics of digital nationalism, and the deep impacts of AI on academic and professional knowledge. An active voice in the international research community, his insights on AI discourses, critical AI literacy, digital culture, and computational methods have been published in leading journals like AI & Society and Big Data & Society, and he regularly shares his work at major interdisciplinary events, including keynotes at the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI), IAMCR, and ECREA. Driven by a passion for interdisciplinary education, he also co-designed the Applied Data Science courses for the Humanities, bridging tech, media, and human culture.

Clement Emenike ADIBE is a Professor of Political Science at DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, USA. He obtained his Ph.D. in Political Science from Queen’s University, Kingston, in 1995, specializing in International Relations and Comparative Politics. Before joining the faculty of DePaul University in 1996, he was a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at Dalhousie University in Canada, where he was also an Assistant Professor of Political Science and coordinator of the Weekly Research Seminar series from 1995 to 1996. Between 1992 and 1994, he was an International Institutions Fellow at Harvard University and Brown University, where his research focus and scholarship examined the role of international organizations, especially the United Nations and regional organizations. In 1995, he served as a researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Switzerland with a focus on peace processes aimed at ameliorating and resolving conflicts in West and East Africa. He served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) from 1997 to 2000 and as a member of the Executive board of ACUNS in 1999. Professor Adibe participated in numerous conferences and colloquia on global education for peace and development at the United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan, under the auspices of Prof. Obi Aginam’s Global Peace and Sustainability initiatives from 2009 to 2014. At DePaul University, he has been part of the Global Learning Engagement initiative, which leverages learning technologies to facilitate teaching and learning about global peace and sustainable development across continents. Professor Adibe’s recent publications include: • “Peace education must begin at home: Reflections on the UNESCO agenda for peace education in the global post-truth environment.” In Democracy in the Post Truth Crisis: The Role of Global Citizenship Education. Seoul: Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding & UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development, 2025, pp. 202-212. • “Re-Imagining Africa: A Continent in Transition and its Implications on World Order.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies, 2022, pp. 1-31. (https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.732)

Joseph Brighton MALEKELA is a Tanzanian youth leader and policy influencer with over a decade of experience advancing youth participation in governance, peace and security processes. He is the Executive Director of The African Leadership Initiatives for Impact (ALII), where he leads initiatives that strengthen youth leadership, promote peacebuilding and support inclusive and sustainable development. Joseph actively contributes to Global Citizenship Education at both national and international levels. He serves as a member of the European Union Youth Sounding Board in Tanzania and East Africa, where he engages with EU Delegation in Tanzania on youth-related priorities and partnerships. He is also a United Nations Tanzania SDGs Youth Champion and a Mandela Washington Fellowship (2024) Alumnus. Through his leadership, Joseph co-chairs the Youth4Peace Agenda – Tanzania Coalition, coordinating multi-stakeholder efforts to advance the Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agenda in Tanzania and promote inclusive governance frameworks. His work which focuses on bridging young people with decision-makers and strengthening institutional responses to youth-driven peace and development priorities made him win the UNESCO Global Citizenship Education Prize (2025) provided by UNESCO HQ in Paris. Joseph holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Ethics and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Strategic and Peace Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam.

Constanza Montero AGUIRRE is the co-founder of Bosque Escuela Tena, a pioneering educational initiative in the Ecuadorian Amazon where the forest is not a backdrop, but a living teacher. She believes education must move beyond transmitting content…it is a vital force that reshapes how we relate to life, one another, and the planet. From this vision, she has co-created an intercultural model that weaves ancestral wisdom with contemporary pedagogies, nurturing children and youth as empathetic, critical, and conscious guardians of their territory. Her work stands at the intersection of education, culture, and ecological regeneration. Through her leadership, Constanza invites educators and global allies to redefine innovation as our collective capacity to care, coexist, and regenerate life.

Ebaide Queen Omiunu is a Nigerian lawyer and climate justice advocate whose work is rooted in Global Citizenship Education, the belief that people everywhere share responsibility for the planet and the systems that govern it, no matter where they were born. As Executive Director of The Ebaidebheki Initiative, she has trained thousands of young people across Africa as Climate Action Ambassadors, helping them see their future as shared and global rather than purely local. She also brings a legal lens to this work, having served on the Nigerian Bar Association’s Climate Justice Committee and the International Bar Association’s Climate Change Working Group, which shapes how she thinks about fairness, accountability, and human dignity as new systems reshape who gets included and who gets left out. Her throughline is simple: communities hit hardest by these changes are too often shut out of the decisions that will determine their future, and closing that gap starts with rebuilding trust.

LEE Wing On is formerly Executive Director of the Institute for Adult Learning and Professor at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. He has previously assumed senior positions at Zhengzhou University, Open University of Hong Kong, National Institute of Education, Singapore, Hong Kong Institute of Education (now EDUHK), University of Sydney and University of Hong Kong. He has received several awards such as Medal of Honour by the HKSAR Government, the Soka Gakkai International Award from the Association and Education Innovation Award from the Chinese Association of Educational Art, Beijing. He was President of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) (2010-13). He is a prolific writer, having published over 36 books and 200 book chapters and journal articles. In 2022, he received the Ming Yuan Education Award from Beijing Normal University and Hall of Fame in Adult and Continuing Education from Oklahoma University.

KIM Myoung-Shin has worked across the fields of AI governance and global citizenship education. He is a Director at LG AI Research, where he leads its Trust & Safety Office, and serves as an IEEE CertifAIEd™ Authorized Lead Assessor and an ISO/IEC 42001 (AI Management Systems) Auditor. Before joining LG AI Research, he was a Senior Programme Specialist at the Korean National Commission for UNESCO, where he was a member of the Republic of Korea's delegation throughout the development of the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. During his time at the Commission, his work spanned Global Citizenship Education (GCED) and the UNESCO Associated Schools Network (ASPnet), education development cooperation with Africa, and the social and human sciences. He has also taught as an adjunct professor at Sungkyunkwan University and served on the Preparatory Committee for the Establishment of the Korea AI Safety Institute and as a policy advisor to the Ministry of Unification and the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, Republic of Korea. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Management, a Master's degree in International Commerce, and a PhD in North Korean Studies.

Divina FRAU-MEIGS is professor emerita of media sociology at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France. She is a world renowned researcher in the media uses and practices of young people as well as information disorders (radicalization, disinformation, hate speech…). She addresses these issues in cross-cutting domains such as Media and Information Literacy (MIL), Cultural Diversity and Internet Governance. She holds the UNESCO chair “Savoir Devenir in sustainable digital development”. She is an expert with UNESCO (MIL, AI, platform governance), the Council of Europe (MIL, Digital Citizenship Education) and the European Union (MIL, digital education, online disinformation). She is the author of more than 40 books and 300 research articles, among which Digital Citizenship Education (CoE, 2017), The Handbook of Media Education Research (Wiley, 2020), Disinformation Debunked: Building Resilience through Media and Information Literacy (Routledge, 2024). She contributed to the code of good practices for fighting online disinformation (DG-Connect 2018) and to the guidelines for fighting disinformation and promoting digital competences in education ((DG-EAC/DG-Connect, 2022). She produced the background paper on MIL for the Global education monitoring report: technology in education: a tool on whose terms? (UNESCO, 2023) and the policy brief on AI and MIL User empowerment through Media and Information Literacy to the evolution of generative Artificial Intelligence (UNESCO, 2024).

Jack WEBSTER is a consultant on digital citizenship education for UNESCO Section of Global Citizenship and Peace Education. Jack is a Professional Teaching Fellow and Education Researcher at the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Arts and Education. His interests lie in the complex relational space between humans and digital technologies and the ways teachers engage with this relational space. His current research explores digital citizenship in schools, in particular teachers’ perceptions of digital citizenship education, the narratives influencing their perceptions, and the impact of AI on teaching and learning. This research is interdisciplinary and looks to identify ways to support the delivery of digital citizenship education across the curriculum.

Yassir SALAH is a senior university professor with over nine years of experience in higher education, specializing in the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, political science, and digital governance. He has designed and coordinated innovative academic programs, including the compulsory doctoral module “Digital Culture” and the excellence course “Artificial Intelligence and Public Decision-Making.” Yassir is an international expert in global citizenship, peace and security, human rights, and intercultural dialogue, with extensive experience in policy analysis, digital transformation, and capacity-building.

Martin OLIVER is Professor of Education and Technology at the UCL Institute of Education, UK. He studies the practices of learning and teaching, using theories of care and repair to make sense of what happens as new technologies such as AI are introduced, exploring how roles and relationships change, how relationships to knowledge are shifting, and what the ethical and political consequences of these developments are. He completed his PhD at the Open University, UK, then worked at the University of North London, at UCL, and at the Institute of Education (IOE), until UCL and IOE merged in 2014. He has edited journals including Learning, Media and Technology, and Research in Learning Technology, and has served on several editorial boards, including Teaching in Higher Education. He is currently a Leverhulme Research Fellow, working on a book about lab-based pedagogies.

LIM Jae-ill is the school director of the Korea International Association for Understanding Education and is an adjunct professor at the Korea National University of Teachers. He teaches environmental and global citizenship education to school teachers. He is interested in self-organization and the educational ecosystem. Mr. Lim is researching the development of sustainable curriculum, and in particular, with students and parents, he is studying the 'all of us curriculum' through curriculum design based on democracy.

Samer AL-SUWAID is an Education Supervisor & Teacher Trainer for the Syrian Ministry of Education. He oversees teacher training, field monitoring, and examination processes for schools in Idlib, Syria, working to sustain quality education under crisis conditions. He has delivered GCED-aligned training to 142 teachers on tolerance, human rights, and conflict resolution, and has supported over 3,500 teachers across crisis-affected schools. His work is grounded in advancing children's right to education, equality, and psychological safety, in line with SDG Target 4.7 on Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship Education.

Yudhanjaya WIJERATNE is a Sri Lankan science fiction author, programmer, and researcher. His novels, including The Salvage Crew, Numbercaste, and The Inhuman Race, explore AI, power, and post-colonial futures. He co-founded Watchdog, one of Sri Lanka’s leading fact-checking and OSINT operations. He is a Gratiaen Prize winner, Nebula Award nominee, Dangerous Speech Fellow, TEDx speaker, Forbes 30 Under 30, and current Open Society Fellow (2025). He has several cats who care about none of these things, and he spends most of his time on his homestead in Kandy, Sri Lanka, learning the care and feeding of potato plants.

NAM Sangwook is an independent film producer and the CEO of the web agency wafactory, based in Japan. He has participated as a producer in films directed by Ilha Lee, including A Crybaby Boxing Club (2014), Counters (2017), and Horoomon (2025). Through these works, he has engaged with issues such as discrimination against Zainichi Koreans, identity, minority communities, and civic resistance in contemporary Japanese society. He has also organized numerous screenings of Korean films in Japan, creating opportunities for cultural exchange and dialogue. Since 2009, he has been a founding member and Deputy Chair of NPO Shiawase Namida, where he has worked on reforming sexual violence laws and raising awareness of sexual violence against persons with disabilities. He also planned and participated in the development of Two Drops (2024), an AI-powered chatbot supporting partners of sexual violence survivors.

Lisa B. SPANIERMAN, PhD, is a Professor in the School of Counseling and Counseling Psychology at Arizona State University and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. Her scholarship focuses on racial microaggressions, the psychosocial costs of racism, and racial justice allyship in higher education and across social contexts. She is coauthor, with Derald Wing Sue, of Microaggressions in Everyday Life (2nd ed.; Wiley, 2020; translated into Korean and Italian), and Breaking the Deadly Dance of Racism: Perpetrators, Targets, Bystanders, and Allies (Wiley, 2026). At McGill University, she led a program of research on racial, religious, gender, and sexual orientation microaggressions in Canada. She also co-convened an international, interdisciplinary workshop on racial and ethnic microaggressions at Bielefeld University’s Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung (ZiF) that focused on how microaggressions manifest across national and cultural contexts.

Abdul Ghani OYAIFO is a distinguished Peace and Human Rights practitioner, educator, and advocate with expertise in conflict management, resolution, mediation, negotiation, and peacebuilding. His work addresses critical issues including gender-based violence, female genital mutilation, and Global Citizenship Education. Through his initiatives, he has trained over 5,400 youth in peace, safety, human rights and GCED programs across schools, communities, and workplaces in Nigeria, while establishing peace clubs in more than 71 schools and recognizing over 500 students as peace ambassadors. He has also led occupational health, safety, and environmental training for over 3,000 workers in diverse sectors. Mr. Oyaifo is the founder and president of the International Society for Peace and Safety (ISOPS), an NGO dedicated to empowering young people as champions of peace and human rights. Established in 2012 and registered in 2015, ISOPS partners with over 23 organizations worldwide and holds UN ECOSOC consultative status.

Amirah Athirah AMIR YAZIED is a Lecturer for the Academy of Language Studies at the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) in Perak Branch, Malaysia. She teaches English proficiency courses and is passionate about making language learning meaningful by integrating Global Citizenship Education (GCED) into her classroom through authentic materials, intercultural discussions, and global issues that expose students to diverse cultures and perspectives. Her goal is to nurture confident communicators and responsible global citizens, one classroom at a time, believing that every student can create a ripple effect of empathy, inclusivity, and global responsibility within their communities and beyond. Her interest in GCED has also led her to research and innovation, including co-developing the Malaysian GCED Manual, which received a Silver Award in Innovation in Education at the International Competition on Sustainable Education (SUSED2025). She is committed to connect her students with the world through language, education, and shared human values.

JEONG Seongkyeong is a research professor in the Department of Education at Chungnam National University. She has taught Global Citizenship Education (GCED) pedagogy to pre-service teachers of secondary education and M.A, Ph.D graduate students at Chungnam National University since 2025. Her research explores the role of GCED in addressing poverty, inequality, and conflict, with a recent focus on the intersection of vocational education and citizenship education.

KIKUCHI Kaori is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Human Sciences at the University of Tsukuba. She specializes in comparative and international education. Her research focuses on changes in "national" education in the global age. Her research topics include nationalism, citizenship and citizenship education policy, education for immigrant children, and diversity and inclusion in education. She published her doctoral research on citizenship education policy in England as a book in 2018 (in Japanese). Her recent work includes a collaborative research project on the comparative study of teacher education for diversity and the translation of the book, Intercultural Approaches to Education: From Theory to Practice. She is currently involved in teacher education aligned with the International Baccalaureate (IB) through the Subprogram in International Education in the Master's Program in Education.

Carl O. DELLOMOS is the Deputy Director of the Global Citizenship Education Cooperation Centre–Philippines (GCC-Philippines) and the Executive Director and Chief Researcher of the Filipino Values Research Laboratory (FiLab) at the Philippine Normal University. He is the current Managing Editor of the PAGHABI: Journal of Global Citizenship Education Research and Practice and Board Member of National Association for Filipino Psychology (Sikolohiyang Pilipino). His work focuses on advancing Global Citizenship Education, Filipino values, and values education through interdisciplinary research, policy development, capacity-building, and international collaboration. He leads research initiatives that promote evidence-based educational innovation, sustainable development, and culturally responsive approaches to teaching, learning, and educational assessment.

Dr. PARK Hwanbo is a professor in the Department of Education at Chungnam National University (CNU), Daejeon, Korea, and director of CNU’s Center for Global Citizenship Education and Research. He holds a Ph.D. in Education from Seoul National University, specializing in the sociology of education and comparative education, and pursued additional studies at Hitotsubashi University and UCLA. His research focuses on how education systems address global challenges such as inequality, migration, and sustainable development, particularly within the framework of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. He is currently conducting various research projects such as monitoring and assessing the impact of global citizenship education (GCED). With over 15 years of experience, he has contributed to international educational development and served as an expert consultant. Prior to his current position, he worked as an associate research fellow for the Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI) that one of the government-funded research institute.

Dora ŠimunoviĆ has been active within the European Council for Steiner Waldorf Education for six years, as the Advocacy and PR coordinator, and is responsible for its European and international level advocacy in the field of digitalisation of education and citizenship education in the digital age (EU, UN, Council of Europe, OECD). In this capacity, she is representing the HERMMES approach that includes guidelines and resources for schools, teachers, and parents on holistic digitalisation practices in education settings. She holds a Political Science Master’s degree from the University of Zagreb and is on the board of the Waldorf School of Rijeka, Croatia.

EOM Jeongmin is Head of the Office of Education and Training at APCEIU. Over the past 15 years, she has led international initiatives on GCED, peace education, curriculum development, and teacher education. Her recent work has focused on integrating GCED into national curricula and education systems across diverse contexts. She has also contributed to regional peace education initiatives in Northeast Asia, including the development of the Common Curriculum Guide for Peace Education in Northeast Asia. She has collaborated with UNESCO, other UN agencies, and governments as a coordinator, researcher, and consultant. Most recently, she co-edited A Modern Guide to Education in East Asia (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2026). She holds a BA in Political Science from Yonsei University, an MEd from the University of Alberta, an MA in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is currently a PhD candidate in Education at Yonsei University.

CHIBA Takashi is a teacher at Koriyama Higashi High School in Fukushima, Japan. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, he has been promoting Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Global Citizenship Education (GCED) through classroom teaching and international exchange programs. He participated in UNESCO ASPnet International events for Students and Teachers in 2014 and has been active in the Korea-Japan Teachers' Network on GCED since 2021, collaborating with teachers in both countries. His educational practice focuses on sustainability, peace education, and intercultural understanding. He believes that international collaboration empowers students to become responsible global citizens and is committed to creating learning opportunities that connect local experiences with global perspectives. His favorite motto is, “Do small but good things.”

ZHANG Wei is the Executive Director of the International Centre for UNESCO ASPnet (ICUA) and Professor at the Institute of Curriculum and Instruction, East China Normal University, Shanghai. She holds an Honorary Professorship at Aarhus University, Denmark, and has been recognized in Stanford University's list of the world's top 2% scientists. She designs and leads international projects on ESD, heritage learning, and education monitoring across 96 countries. A former UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report Fellow, she has served as consultant to international organizations, national and local governments, schools, and EdTech enterprises across multiple countries.

CHENG Yi’En earned his PhD in Geography from the University of Oxford, supported by the Clarendon and St Peter’s Diggle Scholarship, and previously held research fellowships at the Asia Research Institute and Yale-NUS College. His scholarship explores the geographies of education and youth mobilities, including transnational student experiences across Southeast Asia and China. He has contributed to editorial boards such as Global Networks and Children’s Geographies, and serves on the International Geographical Union’s Commission on Research Methods. His current projects extend into rural and peri-urban contexts, examining student mobility circuits between China and Vietnam, and developing research-informed pedagogies for overseas learning. Through this work, Cheng advances Global Citizenship Education by foregrounding young people’s perspectives, fostering intercultural understanding, and linking mobility with critical reflection on citizenship and identity.

KIM Heeyoung is a secondary school teacher in Korea, who has been teaching ethics for 33 years. For the past 15 years, she has shared educational content related to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) with teachers and has led mentoring and research groups of leading teachers. As part of Global Citizenship Education (GCED), the glocal agenda is covered through project classes and international exchange classes based on the students’ local community. In particular, through the connection between SDGs agenda and career education, students are motivated to participate in GCED. Recently, Heeyoung has been analyzing and researching data with an interest in qualitative verification as an assessment method of GCED.

Lea L. ESPALLARDO is a Filipino theater artist, educator, organization development practitioner, and advocate with over three decades of experience using the arts to advance education, leadership, and social change. She holds a Master of Arts in Learning and Teaching and is a senior artist-teacher with the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA), where she leads participatory learning and leadership development initiatives. Lea has facilitated arts-based programs across Southeast Asia and the Greater Mekong Subregion on gender equality, HIV/AIDS awareness, child protection, and creative pedagogy. She has collaborated with UNESCO, APCEIU, and other international partners in teacher education, curriculum integration, and cross-cultural learning on Education for International Understanding and Global Citizenship Education (GCED). Drawing from PETA's creative pedagogy and her expertise in facilitation and organization development, Lea creates reflective, dialogic, and practice-oriented learning experiences that foster transformative learning, inclusive participation, and collective action.