Reflections from the ANGEL conference 2025: speeches and silences

Leave a comment January 9, 2026 riikka

The dates for the next ANGEL (Academic Network for Global Education and Learning) conference in 2026 were just announced. Thus, this is a perfect timing to finally share some memories from the last conference organised in Berlin in June 2025.

This was my third time participating in an ANGEL conference, the previous ones being an online conference for Early Career Researchers during the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020, at the beginning of my PhD thesis project (see previous blog post), and the previous ANGEL conference held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris in 2023. This meant that there were quite a few familiar faces already among the nearly 269 participants who attended the conference in presence in Berlin.

Based on the programme that I attended, themes and questions around global education were relatively similar as in Paris two years before. Sustainability, democracy, and peace as themes, with a particular focus on the value of research for policymaking were stressed. For those interested to see more details on the topics and presentations, the full programme is still available on the ANGEL website. Also the conference report with photos and links to keynote speeches is out: https://angel-network.net/ANGEL_CON25_Report. It is a happy surprise to see how the report highlights the active presence of Finnish researchers in the conference. Finland ranked as sixth for the number of participants in the conference, and as fourth for the number of paper submissions for the conference just after Germany, UK and Spain.

As usual, most of my photos from conferences are of different presentations, with a few quickly taken photos of colleagues at the end of the conference before everyone has to run for their different transportation back home. I was able to stay for a few days with my own expense in Berlin, before continuing to another conference in Denmark, conveniently reachable by train.

Among the most memorable moments for me personally was the day organised for, and by the ANGEL sub-network day for Early Career Researchers before the actual conference. I also presented on my PhD research on this day (titled “Vocational students: politically disengaged or just forgotten global citizens?”), and was part of the team putting the day’s programme together. Some of us continued for an informal dinner and drinks afterwards. The main conference programe also included special slots reserved for early career researchers such in the final panel discussion where Yuemiao Ma and Cheng-Hui Liu shared their reflections of the conference.

Final reflection panel with Yuemiao Ma sharing her perspectives of the conference. Photo: Riikka Suhonen

Another definite highlight was the keynote by New Zealand’s former foreign minister, Nanaia Cybele Mahuta. For me, it was the most touching and humane moment in the entire conference. The keynote is available also on YouTube. Although I suspect it will be less powerful than listening to her in presence, I would still recommend watching it.

Amazing keynote by Nanaia Cybele Mahuta. Photo: Riikka Suhonen.

However, what stuck out at the end as the most unforgettable aspect from the conference was the global justice issue NOT discussed: the ongoing atrocities in Gaza. Only very few speakers in individual sessions brought this up. To some extent this was understandable as the conference was organised, and largely funded by the German government, which continues to support Israel in many ways despite the increasing number of reports by various actors on the committed human rights violations and genocidal acts by the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Public buildings, such as different city halls in Berlin supported Israel very visibly, as the photo below of Berlin’s Rotes Rathaus shows.

Rotes Rathaus in Berlin. Photo: Riikka Suhonen

Nevertheless, such silence among researchers, practitioners and policymakers gathering for a large conference titled as “Research in Global Education and Learning: For Democracy, Peace, Human Rights, Sustainability, and Global Social Justice” did feel even a bit surreal. This erasure of Palestine in the conference programme produced perhaps the most significant impact in my thinking, and also my own posititioning in the field of global citizenship education. After the conference, this observation of the evident challenge in the global citizenship education sector at large to even talk about the genocide in Gaza has spurred first discussions, and then thoughts for action with a few of the early career researchers involved in the field across Europe. We are particularly inspired by the debate started by the Irish global education sector in the journal Policy & Practice: A Development Education Review right after the conflict escalated, continued recently in a blog post by the journal editor Stephen McCloskey.

Palestine/Israel did come up also in my PhD data when interviewing students in vocational education in the winter and spring of 2022-2023. Sometimes students brought up the question spontaneously in the interviews, sometimes I asked specifically whether it had been somehow addressed in their school (it had not been, this was the general response from students in three different schools and fields of study). In Finland, one of the few recently created resources for teachers that at least I am aware of is this teacher training and pedagogical material by the Finn Church Aid and EAPPI programme addressing the question of Palestine and Israel through human rights education. I would recommend Finnish speakers to take a look at this material which is freely available and according to Finn Church Aid, suitable for young people over the age of 15 years.

It will be interesting to see how and whether these silences in the global citizenship education field develop by the conference next year. Perhaps you are interested in knowing what are the dates for the next ANGEL conference to be held in Bologna? Mark your calendars for 10-11 September 2026! To stay updated on the call for abstracts and other news about the upcoming conference, join the ANGEL network. Of course we will also try to keep GERIF network posted through our newsletter which surely everyone already has subscribed to?

Text and photos:

Riikka Suhonen
Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
Research portal │ Google Scholar │ LinkedIn
Co-chair of GERIF and co-creator of the ANGEL sub-network for Early Career Researchers

Disclaimer: The views expressed are solely mine and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of GERIF nor ANGEL.

Video abstract on VET teachers & global issues in Finland

Digesting the ANGEL Summer School on Researching Global Education and Learning

Leave a comment August 19, 2022 riikka

The first ever International Summer School for early career global education researchers was organized by the new UNESCO Chair on Global Citizenship Education in Higher Education at the University of Bologna, the ANGEL network and Global Education Network Europe (GENE). Among the 32 young researchers from universities all over Europe – with many participants originating from countries outside Europe – I was happy to be the one representing Finland!

In this post, I offer a few of my reflections and tips from the Summer School week.

Students, organisers and speakers of the ANGEL Summer School 2022 in Bertinoro, Italy.

Tip 1: Global Education Digest

The theme of the summer school was doing systematic literature reviews. Three days were filled with lectures and discussions around the terminology of global education/learning/citizenship, databases and conducting literature reviews. At the end of each day, in groups we had an in-depth look on the Global Education Digest which is a bibliography of academic publications that the ANGEL network produces annually. The 2021 version included already eight languages (English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Italian and French).

As a first take-away from the Summer School, I would recommend anyone doing research on global citizenship education– or just interested reading the latest research for their work – to have a look at the Digest. I browsed through the 2021 Digest on the train to Bologna and added dozens of publications onto my reading list.

The introductions of different language versions of the Digest are also translated into English. It is interesting to read how the terminology on global education differs between countries and cultural-historical contexts. For example, check the Portuguese introduction to understand why “planetary citizenship” has become the preferred term over “global citizenship” in Brazilian research.

Annette Scheunpflug spoke about the semantics of concepts in global education and learning. When feeling desperate in the middle of all the fuzziness, it can be comforting to remember that “Explication of concepts is often not the starting point of understanding but the result”.

Tip 2: Mapping your own journey to global education

One of the keynote speakers, Annette Scheunpflug from the University of Bamberg first shared her own story, and then asked us to map our journeys in global education.

How did I end up where I am now?
Where did my journey start?
What kind of global learning have I been involved in?
How has this journey affected my understanding of the conceptual field?

We were asked to make Venn diagrams of our own paths, share them with the whole group and tell our stories in smaller groups. This was not only a wonderful icebreaker exercise, but useful for establishing our positions in the vast field of global education.

Some of our Venn diagrams are featured below.

In her keynote, Annette reminded us that we are dealing with fuzzy terms in global education. Global learning, sustainable development, global citizenship education or intercultural learning have various meanings – and power dynamics around the definitions of the terms should be clear to everyone involved in these fields.

It would have been beneficial for us to have much more time for this kind of informal sharing of each others’ research, methods, personal and professional stories. However, the schedule at the Summer School was extremely packed with speakers and group work from 9am to 6pm with only short breaks in between. Our energy levels to have academic discussions in the evening were further affected by the unusually hot weather (+34 on average, also inside many rooms at the venue). It was only at the very end of the Summer School when we were collecting contact details that I saw participants’ interests including topics such as epistemologies of the South, ecofeminism, critical pedagogy or decolonial theories, among others.

The final Summer School day was spent at a conference in the centre of Bologna: the hall is exquisitely beautiful, but was VERY hot (probably over 40 degrees inside). I would not have survived without a fan.
Photo: Riikka Suhonen.

Tip 3: Consider travelling on land instead of flying, even from Finland

Practicing what you preach can be tough: you know, acting as a responsible global citizen for more sustainable futures etc. Finland is not in the easiest geographical location to avoid flying. Yet, I was able to travel with ferry/train from Finland to Bologna (actually going to Manchester first, using the Interrail pass for the route Helsinki-Turku-Stockholm-Hamburg-Manchester, and then Manchester-London-Paris-Torino-Bologna). Many participants coming from countries much closer to Italy had flown to Bologna. Some statistics from my journey below:

Although it might be challenging for family, work or other practical reasons to organize travelling on land – as it takes at least two days to get to Italy from Finland, for example – it is worth at least to consider it. Interrail pass and booking seat reservations worked great for me. Offline work on trains is very comfortable, much more so than on airplanes. Due to time reasons, I did however fly back home, and the experience at the packed airport of Bologna with all flights delayed or cancelled (except mine) was not a pleasant one.

This is also a call for universities and other funding entities: please ensure more generous travel grants for those who want to and can travel ecologically. My participation to the Summer School was made possible by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation and I am very grateful for their support.

Finally, here is our key reading list for the Summer School. Many of them are already well-known and widely used, but perhaps there are also new ones to the blog readers!

Academic Network on Global Education & Learning (ANGEL) (2021). Global Education Digest 2021. Development Education Research Centre: London, UK.

Bourn, D. (2020). (Ed.) The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Education and Learning. London: Bloomsbury

Goren, H. & Yemini, M. (2017). Global citizenship education redefined. A systematic review of empirical studies on global citizenship education. International Journal of Educational Research, 82, 170-183.

Hartmeyer, H. and Wegimont, L. (eds) (2016) Global Education in Europe Revisited. Munster: Waxmann.

Oxley, L., and Morris, P. (2013). Global Citizenship: A Typology for Distinguishing Its Multiple Conceptions. British Journal of Educational Studies, 61 (3). 301–25.

Pashby, K., da Costa, M., Stein, S., & Andreotti, V. (2020). A meta-review of typologies of global citizenship education. Comparative Education, 56(2), 144–164.

Shultz, L. (2007). Educating for global citizenship: Conflicting agendas and understandings. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 53(3), 248–258

Tarozzi, M. and Torres, C. A. (2016). Global citizenship education and the crises of multiculturalism. London: Bloomsbury.

The Summer School event report and evaluation are available at https://angel-network.net/SummerSchoolReport. A more visual report of the event can be seen below in the compilation of short video clips and photos from the week!

Compilation of video clips and photos from the Summer School by the organisers: UNESCO Chair in Global Citizenship Education in Higher Education.

Riikka Suhonen is a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Programme in School, Education, Society and Culture (SEDUCE), Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki. In her PhD research, she examines how global citizenship education is understood and enacted in the context of upper secondary vocational education and training in Finland.

riikka.suhonen (at) helsinki.fi
Twitter: @Af_riikka
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6167-6352

Photos and video: Summer school organisers / UNESCO Chair in Global Citizenship Education in Higher Education.

Book review: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Education and Learning (2020)

1 Comment December 9, 2021 riikka

Bourn, D. (Ed.). (2020). *The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Education and Learning*. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350108769

Research on global (citizenship) education is growing. This is clearly demonstrated in the nearly 500 pages of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Education and Learning, published in 2020.

Douglas Bourn, the editor of this landmark book is a Professor of Development Education, Director of Development Education Research Centre at the University College London, and the Chair of the Advisory Board for Academic Network of Global Education Researchers (ANGEL).

In this blog post, I want to highlight some chapters of the book that could interest particularly researchers and practitioners based in Finland. I have divided them under three good reasons to read the handbook: 1) Getting to know the diversity of global education; 2) Acquainting yourself with the latest research; and 3) Positioning yourself in the field of global education.

1. Get to know the diversity of global education

The Handbook represents the diversity of global education both thematically and geographically. Through Bourn’s introduction and conclusions, the reader gains a wide overview of the diversity and historical background of GE approaches. Bourn describes how the values of social justice, equity and human rights are central, but also Freirean critical pedagogy, dialogue and social action together with post-colonial and post-structural thinking continue to influence the current GE research.

The book is divided into six themes: 1) Challenges for Today and Tomorrow; 2) Theoretical Perspectives; 3) Impact of Policies and Programmes; 4) Global Perspectives in Higher Education; 5) Global Education and Learning within Schools; and 6) Learning and Experience and Being Global Citizens.

The 33 chapters of the handbook cover research from all over the world: Austria, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Nigeria, Poland, Spain, Tobago, Taiwan, South Africa, United States, UK, and Zanzibar.

For Finnish researchers, an interesting chapter to start could be the review “Global Education Research in Finland” by Elina Lehtomäki and Antti Rajala. Using the five dimensions of GE from the Maastricht Declaration as the basis, they note how GE research in Finland has focused on intercultural education and education for sustainable development and much less on development education, human rights education or education for peace and conflict prevention.

Another chapter focuses on higher education students in Finland: Hanna Posti-Ahokas, Josephine Moate and Elina Lehtomäki write about the need to challenge students’ understanding of development and global responsibility in “How Do Higher Education Students Negotiate Global Responsibility in Education?”.

A screenshot from Elina Lehtomäki’s presentation on the book chapter on GE research in Finland at the EERA Conference symposium on global education in September 2021.

2. Acquaint yourself with the latest research

The Handbook includes chapters both by well-known, established global education researchers (e.g. Bourn, Andreotti, Scheunpflug) as well as emerging PhD researchers sharing their latest results.

Those working on teacher training may find Claire Bennett’s chapter “Continuing Professional Development of Teachers in Global Learning: What Works?” valuable. Bennett argues for time and ongoing support for teachers instead of one-off training events. Teachers value collaboration within or between schools with peers, thus creating the feeling of being “in it together”. Teachers also appreciate regaining a sense of purpose and developing their knowledge and pedagogy as a result of CPD, and call for follow-up sessions to reflect on the practical implementation of their learning.

Organisations dealing with international volunteering, internships or study exchanges may gain insights from Mags Liddy’s chapter “Apprenticeship of Reflexivity: Immersive Learning from International Volunteering as Teacher Professional Development”. Liddy focuses on Irish teachers volunteering for short periods in Indian schools. She highlights that thorough preparation and questioning one’s own practice reflexively are needed for the international experience to become transformational. According to Liddy, affective moments of learning, having to deal with uncomfortability and reassessing Western privileges are key for global learning to take place.

3. Position yourself in the field of global education

The range of GE can be overwhelming: Where do you locate yourself in this vast field? The diversity of different disciplines, levels of education and geographical locations is well represented in the Handbook.

For example Madeleine Le Bourdon’s chapter “The Role of Informal Spaces in Global Citizenship Education” explores non-formal educational summer camps and how informal spaces can provide “the time and space lacking in structured learning environment, as well as the opportunity for peer and independent learning” (Le Bourdon, 2020).

This case of informal learning reminds me of a task given to university students on the course “Education and Global Justice”. One group chose Extinction Rebellion Finland from the list of possible organisations and interviewed some of its members. The XR volunteers were extremely surprised to be even considered as “global educators”, although they had been conducting informal school visits, and were engaged in a global, democratic climate justice movement at the community level. Critical, advocacy-oriented GE can materialize in this kind of more self-educative form of ‘Bildung’ among adults. GE in a kindergarten would look very different: there is no one right way of doing global education, and this is well conveyed throughout the Handbook.

How to read the Handbook?

After reading around a dozen of the chapters, I can see many potential usages for this Handbook. We have included some chapters as course literature in the “Education and Global Justice” course organized for the Changing Education Master’s students at the University of Helsinki.

The book can also be used for self or group study, focusing on the themes of your particular interest. For instance, people working on GE projects may find chapters on impact, or on teachers’ CPD beneficial when designing new initiatives around GE.

It could be fruitful to pick a chapter to read with colleagues or peers from workplaces or networks, and discuss the text in a reading circle. Bringing diverse thoughts together might even create new ideas for future research or practice of global education!

Text:

Riikka Suhonen
Doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Programme on School, Education, Culture and Society (SEDUCE)
University of Helsinki
riikka.suhonen (at) helsinki.fi

Twitter: @Af_riikka
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6167-6352

Global Education Research in Finland (GERIF)

Author: riikka