The BAICE Executive Committee are delighted to announce that the BAICE President for 2021-2022 is Professor Mario Novelli from the University of Sussex. Mario’s work focuses on education and peacebuilding in contexts of conflict which is a fantastic fit with BAICE 2022’s theme of partnerships in education, where Professor Novelli will deliver a keynote address.
In his inaugural speech at the BAICE Annual General Meeting, Professor Novelli observed that an important feature of the field of International and Comparative Education is that it applies itself practically to the real world as many scholars within the field are engaged in practice. He recognised that this often comes with the challenge of scholars being subject to donors and funders and pushed in different directions, some of which they do not necessarily want to go. Professor Novelli stated that he belongs to the stream within the field that makes efforts to push back and raise issues around the domination of certain funders and countries, including the UK, and the inequalities that arise from this which manifest themselves not only in donor agendas but also in unequal partnerships between the Global North and South. He is looking to raise some of these issues in his keynote adresss in the BAICE 2022 conference.
We would like to extend a huge thank you to our outgoing President, Professor Paul Morris from the Institute of Education, UCL. Paul held this position for two years due to the pandemic-related cancellation of BAICE 2020 and delivered his Presidential Address at this year’s UKFIET conference instead. We are grateful for his flexibility and wide-ranging insights and expertise that enabled him to develop an entirely new keynote to fit in with the UKFIET theme.