Professor Peter O’Connor is the Director of the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation at the Faculty of Education and Social Work, the University of Auckland.  Peter is an internationally recognised expert in making and researching applied theatre and drama education. He has made theatre in prisons, psychiatric hospitals, earthquake zones and with the homeless. He led the creation of Te Rito Toi, an online resource to support the return to school by children post-disaster. Peter’s most recent research includes multi and interdisciplinary studies on the creative pedagogies and the arts, the nature of embodied learning and the pedagogy of surprise.

Dr Maria Perreau is the National Kaiārahi for the Aotearoa Social Studies Educators’ Network (ASSEN). In this role, Maria supports and develops best practice resourcing and teaching of social studies around the country, across primary, intermediate, and secondary levels. Maria is committed to creating opportunities for young people to participate and contribute to their communities. She believes that this means making space for them to be listened to and empowering them to be more fully involved in our democracy. Using arts based education for social justice is a powerful way to achieve this.

Holly Bodman is a social justice educator who has taught for more than 10 years at secondary and tertiary levels. She spends about half of her time running a senior social studies programme about local and global social movements at her community high school, and the rest of her time coaching teachers. Holly’s interests include citizenship education, decolonising curriculum and teacher education. She has a master of arts degree with first class honours and a postgraduate diploma in teaching from the University of Auckland.

Alejandra Jaramillo-Aristizabal is an educator and researcher born in Medellín, Colombia. With an interdisciplinary background on philosophy, dance, anthropology, and education, one of her main interests is on decoloniality. The aim of her work is challenging and undoing the race/gender/age hierarchies that constitute the colonial matrix. For this reason, she engages in learning with grassroots movements (youth-led groups, climate action initiatives, indigenous struggles) paying attention to how they contest those hierarchies and imagine/embody alternative worlds.

Ko Waikato/Tainui te iwi,

Ko Ngāti te Aata raua ko Ngāti Tīpa ōku hāpu.

No Tuakau ahau

Ko Alicia Poroa tāku ingoa

Alicia Poroa has been an educationalist for over twenty years and has worked in a variety of teaching and leading roles.  She has three gorgeous children all of whom have had a primary school education that is based on democratic, human centred education principles.  She is an executive member of the NEX organisation Aotearoa Social Studies Educators Network and has a passion for supporting young people to think, act and design with empathy, understanding and awareness to be highly participatory in positive change for creating their futures. She loves to walk hills, hear the birds sing and watch the ocean lap against the shore. Te Taiao (the outdoor natural environment) is her favourite place to be.