Emmanuel Acquah is Associate Professor of Education and Minority Research at the Faculty of Education and Welfare Studies, Åbo Akademi University. His primary research interests are in advancing equity in the training and practice of educators of multicultural and multilingual learners. He has related interests in diversity, equity and inclusion. He is the Principal Investigator in the Researching Effective Language-Game Design for Immigrant Integration (REDIT) project and leader of two Erasmus+ projects, Inclusion through mediation and Designing and supporting inclusive practices in higher education. He is also a partner in the Erasmus+ project called School Harnessing Inclusive Facilitator Technology (SHIFT). He has published extensively in the areas of multicultural and multilingual education, adolescents' socio-emotional well-being and children's' social interaction in the classroom. He recently developed a professional development course for Åbo Akademi University staff training called Diversity, Equality and Inclusion and is the director of the International Master's Degree Programme in Education called Teaching and Learning at the Faculty of Education at the Åbo Akademi University.
Mel Ainscow is Emeritus Professor, University of Manchester, Professor of Education, University of Glasgow, and Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology. A long-term consultant to UNESCO, he is internationally recognised as an authority on the promotion of inclusion and equity in education. He recently led the development of a series of policy documents for UNESCO, including its ‘Guide for Ensuring Inclusion and Equity in Education’. Mel is also a consultant to an initiative organised by the Organization of American States, supporting national developments in nine Latin American countries. He has recently completed collaborative research projects with networks of schools in Australia and five European countries. Examples of his writing can be found in: ‘Struggles for equity in education: the selected works of Mel Ainscow’ (Routledge World Library of Educationalists series). In the Queen’s 2012 New Year Honours list, Mel was made a Commander of the British Empire for services to education.
Lucie Cerna is Project Leader for Strength through Diversity in the Directorate for Education and Skills, OECD, Paris and an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University Singapore. At the OECD, she has worked on a variety of education topics, including the governance of education, trust, national skills strategies and currently the Strength through Diversity project. Prior to coming to the OECD, she was a Lecturer in Politics at Merton College, University of Oxford, an Assistant Professor in Global Challenges (Political Economy) at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and a Research Associate at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), Oxford. Lucie has published widely on migration, education and skills issues – her most recent book is Immigration Policies and the Global Competition for Talent (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). She holds a DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford.
Alexandre Rutigliano is a Consultant for the OECD Strength through Diversity project. Alexandre holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology at Aix-Marseille University and a Master’s degree in Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs at Sciences Po, Paris. He specialises on cultural diversity, children’s rights, inclusion and education policy. He previously taught in a primary school in Vietnam and worked in Bolivia with an NGO promoting children’s right to participation in the country. Within the project, Alexandre mainly focuses on the inclusion of ethnic groups, national minorities and Indigenous peoples, gifted students and LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other) students in education systems.