KEYNOTES

Daniel Fischer is Professor of Sustainability Education and Communication and Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in Higher Education for Sustainable Development at Leuphana University Lüneburg, where he also serves as the Director of the Sustainability Education and Transdisciplinary Research Institute (SETRI) and coordinates the UNITWIN Network on ESD and Social Transformation. He is a trained primary school teacher, completed a Masters degree in educational management and school development, and a PhD in Sustainability Science. His research explores how more sustainable ways of living can be facilitated in education, with a special emphasis on Teacher Education and Teacher Leadership. His current projects are on learning assessment, transdisciplinary learning interventions and capacity building in ESD leadership. Previously, he held academic positions at Arizona State University (USA) and Wageningen University (The Netherlands). More on his work can be found on the webpages of his Sustainability Education Research Group (SERG).

Blanchard Nsuka is a secondary school teacher and a member of the administrative staff at the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique de Lubumbashi (ISP Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo). He is also a technical assistant and project manager for the IFADEM programme, RTIA phase (Regional Teachers Initiative for Africa). Having studied analytical chemistry at the National Pedagogical University of Kinshasa, he designs educational booklets for teacher training via distance learning and works as a trainer of trainers in collaboration with the Ministry of National Education and as a member of RéUniFEDD (the Francophone University Network for Education for Sustainable Development). His work focuses primarily on Education for Sustainable Development, with an emphasis on the environment, inclusion and gender equality.

A philosopher and sociologist by training, Irène Pereira is a Professor of Education and Training Sciences at the University of Rouen Normandy and a researcher at the CIRNEF laboratory. Her current work focuses on the philosophy of education and ethics. She specializes in critical pedagogies in the tradition of Paulo Freire. She has authored and edited several books on the subject: Paulo Freire: Pedagogues of the Oppressed (2017), Critical Philosophy in Education (2018), The International Anthology of Critical Pedagogy (2019), and Ecopedagogy: Educating for Social and Ecological Justice (2024).

MANDY SINGER-BRODOWSKI

Prof. Dr. Mandy Singer-Brodowski studied educational science at the University of Erfurt. She worked at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy and as the scientific coordinator of the Center for Transformation Research and Sustainability at the University of Wuppertal. In 2015 she completed her PhD at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg about Self-organised Learning and Competence Development in Higher Education for Sustainable Development. After being PI of different research projects at Freie Universität Berlin, she was appointed as a professor for Education for Sustainable Development at the University of Regensburg (Germany) in 2024.

Zintle Songqwaru is a senior lecturer at the Education Faculty in the Secondary and Post-School Department, Rhodes University, South Africa. She has 12 years experience in teacher education, working with both pre- and in-service teachers. She has been involved in the South African national Teacher Education programme, Fundisa for Change which supports the integrationof ESD in the South African national school curriculum, as well has participated in the SADC Sustainability Starts with Teachers - Capacity Building Programme, that was established to support teacher educators to strengthen theintegration on ESD in teacher education programmes. Zintle's doctoral study was on the evaluation of the Fundisa for Change teacher education programme. Zintle’s research interest is on ESD, programme evaluation, curriculum studies, community engagement in Teacher Education and ESD teacher leadership.