Students, guest speaker present education symposium at Bates

 

The Bates education department hosts a symposium comprising student presentations followed by a keynote address beginning at 3 p.m. Wednesday, April 8, on the second floor of Commons, 136 Central Ave.

The event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact cmoran@bates.edu.

The keynote speaker is Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher, who will present an address titled Understanding Religiosity Across Scales: Muslim Youth, Education and Identity in a Transitional World. She speaks at 5:30 p.m. in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

The symposium begin with presentations by students from the education department. Many of the students will be presenting research they have conducted as a part of the interdisciplinary course African Perspectives on Justice, Human Rights and Renewal.

This collaborative course is taught by a team of professors and guest speakers, and examines the discourses surrounding a range of contemporary issues in Africa from race and gender to environment and culture.

Ghaffar-Kucher earned her doctorate in international education development from Teachers College, Columbia University, and she is currently a senior lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on the educational experiences of immigrant youth in the U.S. and on education policies in predominantly Muslim countries.

Ghaffar-Kucher’s work has received many accolades: Her writings on Afghan refugees made the reading list for the Clinton Global Initiative in 2009, and she has been recognized several times by the Council on Anthropology and Education.