IAFOR > The Barcelona Conference on Education (BCE) > BCE2024 Overview

BCE2024 Overview

Join us in Barcelona for BCE2024!

13-16 November, 2024 | Held in Barcelona, Spain (and online)

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Welcome to The 4th Barcelona Conference on Education (BCE2024), held in partnership with the IAFOR Research Centre at the Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, Japan.

For those of you who were fortunate enough to attend an IAFOR conference before COVID appeared from over the horizon, you will remember the calibre of research presented, the thrill of listening to engaging keynotes, discussions with respected plenary speakers, and socialising with like-minded scholars from across the globe. The opportunity to not only meet with old friends from previous IAFOR conferences, but also to introduce new minds into your intellectual network.

So what about conferences under the “new normal” COVID restrictions in effect across the world? IAFOR saw very quickly that the online and hybrid conferences were the only way to keep the heart of the academic community beating, and adapted their activities to suit this rare situation with finesse. Of course, nothing can substitute the dynamism of in-person conferences, but the IAFOR online experience not only maintains the superb quality one expects of an IAFOR conference, it surpasses, by taking advantage of innovative and exciting and new formats that could only have been envisioned in the wake of a global crisis. How about a face-to-face conversation between two experts, writers, filmmakers, from countries thousands of miles apart? Experts who otherwise would have been unable to meet due to geographical or political adversities– a magnificent opportunity indeed.

There are more reasons than ever before to join BCE and BAMC in Barcelona. The era of the online and hybrid conference is strange and unfamiliar, but also revolutionary and liberating, opening doors and allowing its speakers’ words to be heard across the world.

The Barcelona Conference on Education (BCE2024) will be held alongside The Barcelona Conference on Arts, Media & Culture (BAMC2024), and many of the sessions will concentrate on areas at the intersection of education and the arts and humanities. In keeping with IAFOR’s commitment to interdisciplinary study, delegates at either conference are encouraged to attend sessions in other disciplines. Registration for either conference will allow delegates to attend sessions in the other. We expect the resultant professional and personal collaborations to endure for many years, and we look forward to seeing you in Barcelona and online!

– The BCE2024 Conference Committee

IAFOR Journal of Education (Scopus Indexed Journal)

This conference is associated with the Scopus and DOAJ listed IAFOR Journal of Education.
 

Key Information
  • Venue & Location: Held in Barcelona, Spain (and online)
  • Dates: Tuesday, November 12, 2024 ​to Saturday, November 16, 2024
  • Early Bird Abstract Submission Deadline: June 14, 2024*
  • Final Abstract Submission Deadline: August 16, 2024
  • Registration Deadline for Presenters: September 20, 2024

*Submit early to take advantage of the discounted registration rates. Learn more about our registration options.

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Plenary Speakers

  • Heitor Alvelos
    Heitor Alvelos
    University of Porto, Portugal
  • Joan Delgado
    Joan Delgado
    The Raval's Band, Spain
  • Agustín Gálvez
    Agustín Gálvez
    The Raval's Band, Spain
  • Raúl Fortes-Guerrero
    Raúl Fortes-Guerrero
    University of Valencia, Spain
  • Donald E. Hall
    Donald E. Hall
    Binghamton University, United States
  • Dolors Ortega
    Dolors Ortega
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Baden Offord
    Baden Offord
    Curtin University, Australia
  • Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes
    Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes
    Curtin University, Australia

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Programme

  • The Horizon of Our Common Cause: Narratives, Ideas and Conviviality
    The Horizon of Our Common Cause: Narratives, Ideas and Conviviality
    Keynote Presentation: Baden Offord
  • Future-Focused Education through Critical Appreciative Dialogue
    Future-Focused Education through Critical Appreciative Dialogue
    Keynote Presentation: Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes
  • The Work of the University in Perilous Times
    The Work of the University in Perilous Times
    Keynote Presentation: Donald E. Hall

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Conference Committees

International Advisory Board

Dr Joseph Haldane, Chairman and CEO, IAFOR
His Excellency Professor Toshiya Hoshino, Osaka University, Japan
Professor Barbara Lockee, Virginia Tech., United States
Professor Donald E. Hall, Binghamton University, United States
Dr James W. McNally, University of Michigan, United States & NACDA Program on Aging
Professor Haruko Satoh, Osaka University, Japan
Dr Grant Black, Chuo University, Japan
Professor Dexter Da Silva, Keisen University, Japan
Professor Gary Swanson, University of Northern Colorado, United States
Professor Baden Offord, Curtin University, Australia
Professor Frank Ravitch, Michigan State University, United States
Professor William Baber, Kyoto University, Japan

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Conference Programme Committee

Conference Co-Chairs

Dr Joseph Haldane, The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
Professor Sue Ballyn, University of Barcelona, Spain

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Review Committee

Dr Rena Alasgarova, Baku Oxford School, Azerbaijan
Dr Kiran Chalise, Mid-west University, Nepal
Dr Abdelhafid Deira, Higher School of Management Annaba, Algeria
Dr Jagad Aditya Dewantara, Universitas Tanjungpura, Indonesia
Dr Perihan Fidan, Tennessee Tech University, United States
Dr Alexander Ibni, Zamboanga Peninsula Polytechnic State University, Philippines
Professor Dr. Md. Monirul Islam, International University of Business Agriculture and Technology, Bangladesh
Dr Guranda Khabeishvili, International Black Sea University, Georgia
Dr Sonia Martin Gomez, Universidad San Pablo CEU, Spain
Dr Loredana Muscat, Institute for Education, Malta
Dr Muhammad Irwan Padli Nasution, Universitas Islam Negeri Sumatera Utara, Indonesia
Dr Angela Mary Nicol, All Saints' College, Australia
Dr Queen Ogbomo, Tennessee Tech University, United States
Professor Mario Pace, University of Malta, Malta
Dr Nato Pachuashvili, International Black Sea University, Georgia
Dr Deus Shatta, National Institute of Transport, Tanzania
Dr Hongzhuan Song, Nazareth College of Rochester, United States
Dr Stephanie Wendt, Tennessee Tech University, United States
Professor Mohammed Zerf, Physical Education Institute, Algeria


IAFOR's peer review process, which involves both reciprocal review and the use of Review Committees, is overseen by the Conference Programme Committee under the guidance of the International Academic Board (IAB). Review Committee members are established academics who hold PhDs or other terminal degrees in their fields and who have previous peer review experience.

If you would like to apply to serve on the BCE2024 Review Committee, please visit our application page.

Apply to Join the Review Committee

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Heitor Alvelos
University of Porto, Portugal

Biography

Heitor Alvelos is Associate Professor at the University of Porto, where he directs the PhD Program on Design and the Unexpected Media Lab at the ID+ Research Center for Design, Media & Culture. He is currently Chairman of the Scientific Board for Humanities & Social Sciences at the Foundation for Science & Technology, Executive Board Member of the European Academy of Design, and a Member of Academia Europaea. Heitor has spoken as a conference keynote and professor at academic and business institutions around the world, and has also provided consultancy for the Portuguese Ministry of Science, the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council, and the EU Commission's New European Bauhaus (on behalf of Portugal).

Heitor curated the FuturePlaces Media Lab for Citizenship from 2008 to 2017 (with the University of Texas at Austin), and has recently completed the coordination of the FCT/H2020 project "Anti-Amnesia: Design Research as an Agent for Narrative and Material Regeneration and Reinvention of Vanishing Portuguese Manufacturing CVultures and Techniques".

As a designer/media artist, Heitor has worked with Touch (UK), Tuxedomoon (BE/USA), Radio Manobras (PT), KREV (SE), Ash international (UK), The Tapeworm (DE/UK), Visible (ES), 333 (DE/PT) and Stopestra (PT), among others.

Further information at www.benevolentanger.org

Workshop Presentation (2024) | TBA
Joan Delgado
The Raval's Band, Spain

Biography

Guitarist Joan Delgado is an architect with a passion for music. He studied classical guitar from a young age, over time discovering the magic of the regional 'rumba catalana' sound and its ‘ventilador’. From this moment on, his interest in the guitar shifted to that of an accompanist, blending his background in flamenco with specialised training in the Andalusian guitar.

Mr Delgado has been a constant feature of Barcelona's musical scene since 2010, accompanying musicians in various styles (including flamenco, rumba, bossa nova) and combining the rhythmic base of the solo guitar with traditional latin rhythms. He is known for his collaborations with Swiss-Mexican singer Raissa Avilés and more recently with Argentinian singer Dominique Maucci and French-Tunisian percussionist Narjess Saad.

In addition to his work as a guitarist, composer, and arranger in his rumba catalana band, International del Raval, Mr Delgado has honed his skills as a musician with courses in percussion (including cajón flamenco and palmas) and has played as a trombonist in the Raval's Band and the Txaranga de la Prospe.

Interactive Performance (2024) | The Rumba Catalana: An Interactive Performance by Joan Delgado and Agustín Gálvez
Agustín Gálvez
The Raval's Band, Spain

Biography

Although musician-singer Agustín Gálvez was born in Bilbao, his family came from the region of Aragon of northeastern Spain. Mr Gálvez learned to play the traditional Aragonese bandurria when he was seven years old, performing in local groups throughout his youth. Although music has always been a part of his life, he began studying it seriously after he moved to Barcelona and transitioned from a competitive athletic career. He bought himself a tenor saxophone and began taking classes at the then-recently established Taller de Musics in Barcelona. He gradually added classes in solfeo at the Conservatory of Music and, given the quality of his singing voice, was urged to study singing.

Although he trained as a lyric tenor, he always gravitated towards salsa – boleros, rumbas, huarache – while performing professionally with various bands. He is now part of three Big Jazz bands – The Raval's Band, L'EM Big Band, and the Bibandinou.

Interactive Performance (2024) | The Rumba Catalana: An Interactive Performance by Joan Delgado and Agustín Gálvez
Raúl Fortes-Guerrero
University of Valencia, Spain

Biography

Professor Fortes-Guerrero combines his work as a researcher and lecturer of Japanese language and culture at the University of Valencia’s Area of East Asian Studies with his task as coordinator of the Asia and Oceania Committees at the university’s International Observatory of Intangible Culture and Global Village (UVObserver-Intangible Heritage), linked to the UNESCO Chair for Development Studies. He received his BA in Audiovisual Communication, his BA in History of Art with Special Distinction, and his PhD Cum Laude and International Doctor Mention in History of Art from the University of Valencia, Spain. To this can be added his duties as a member of scientific committees of congresses (XIV Congreso Nacional y V Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Estudios Japoneses en España), peer reviewer for scientific journals (MIRAI. Estudios Japoneses, FOTOCINEMA. Revista Científica de Cine y Fotografía), and exhibitions curator (Hiroshige y su época. Visiones de la naturaleza en el arte japonés y chino del siglo XIX).

His research achievements have awarded him two prestigious fellowships (Association of International Education, Japan; Spanish Ministry of Education and Science’s National Teacher-Training Program) an Erasmus grant for teachers’ mobility, and research posts at Waseda University, Japan; Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom; and the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Professor Fortes-Guerrero has authored a number of articles, books, and book chapters, including , among them the most comprehensive monograph on Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki written in Spanish (Hayao Miyazaki, Akal, 2019) and a reference film guide for his praised movie Spirited Away (“El viaje de Chihiro”. Hayao Miyazaki (2001), Nau Llibres/Octaedro, 2011).

Professor Fortes-Guerrero has also served as a translator for the reference journals “L'Atalante”. Revista de Estudios Cinematográficos and Hojas en la acera. Gaceta trimestral de haiku. He also publishes his tanka poems monthly in Kokoro no Hana, a renowned literary magazine published by the Japanese poetry society Chikuhaku-kai.

Keynote Presentation (2024) | East Wind, West Wind: Intertextuality, Transculturality, and Temporal and Spatial (Re)creations in the Cinema of Miyazaki Hayao
Donald E. Hall
Binghamton University, United States

Biography

Donald E. Hall is Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Binghamton University (SUNY), USA. He was formerly Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering at the University of Rochester, USA, and held a previous position as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University, USA. Provost Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies. Over the course of his career, he served as Jackson Distinguished Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English (and previously Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages) at West Virginia University. Before that, he was Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for 13 years. He is a recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award at CSUN, was a visiting professor at the National University of Rwanda, was Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He served on numerous panels and committees for the Modern Language Association (MLA), including the Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, and the Convention Program Committee. In 2012, he served as national President of the Association of Departments of English. From 2013-2017, he served on the Executive Council of the MLA.

His current and forthcoming work examines issues such as professional responsibility and academic community-building, the dialogics of social change and activist intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational, and sexual selves. Among his many books and editions are the influential faculty development guides, The Academic Self and The Academic Community, both published by Ohio State University Press. Subjectivities and Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies were both published by Routledge Press. Most recently he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, co-edited a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Though he is a full-time administrator, he continues to lecture worldwide on the value of a liberal arts education and the need for nurturing global competencies in students and interdisciplinary dialogue in and beyond the classroom.

Professor Donald E. Hall is a Vice-President of IAFOR. He is Chair of the Arts, Humanities, Media & Culture division of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Keynote Presentation (2024): The Work of the University in Perilous Times
Keynote Presentation (2023): There Is No New Normal
Dolors Ortega
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Dr Dolors Ortega Arévalo has been a lecturer of Literature in English at the University of Barcelona, Spain since the year 2010, teaching courses focused on Contemporary Fiction in English, Modernist and Postmodernist Literature in English, Medieval Literature, North American Contemporary Fiction, Shakespeare and Postcolonial Literatures, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She received her PhD from the University of Barcelona and she was awarded the European Doctorate Mention for her thesis "Deterritorialising Patriarchal Binary Oppositions: Deleuze, Woolf, Masculinities and Film Adaptation", after a year as a Visiting Doctoral Researcher under the supervision of Dr Humm at the University of East London, United Kingdom. Her research has focused mainly on Modernist writers, Gender Studies, Contemporary British Fiction, Film Adaptations, Postcolonial Literatures and the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. She has most recently been working on transnationalisms and hybridity and has published the prologue and only authorised annotated Spanish translation of F.S. Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon (2014) as well as the prologue of F.S. Fitzgerald’s Cuentos Rebeldes (2018). She is a member of the consolidated research group Ratnakara with its current project “Rhizomatic Communities: Myths of Belonging in the Indian Ocean World,” funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PGC2018-095648-B-I00). She has been a member of the academic committee of the MA “Construcció i Representació d’Estudis Anglesos” of “Facultat Filologia i Comunicació de la Universitat de Barcelona”, and is currently a member of the executive committee of “Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals (CEAT)” and the Head of Studies of CFA Rius i Taulet School for Adults in Barcelona.

Panel Presentation (2024): TBA

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2022): Adult Education and the ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’: Vulnerability, Resilience, and Lifelong Learning
Baden Offord
Curtin University, Australia

Biography

Baden Offord is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights at Curtin University, Australia. Born in Aotearoa/New Zealand of Māori and Pākehā heritage, he has lived most of his life in Australia, as well as several years in Spain, South India, and Japan. An internationally respected scholar in human rights, education, sexuality and culture, his latest book (co-edited with Fleay, Hartley, Woldeyes and Chan) is Activating Cultural and Social Change: The Pedagogies of Human Rights (London, Routledge: 2022).

Professor Offord has held academic appointments as the Dr Haruhisa Handa Chair of Human Rights in the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University (2015-2020); as Chair (Visiting Professor) of Australian Studies, Centre for Pacific and American Studies at The University of Tokyo (2010-2011); as Visiting Professor at the University of Barcelona; and as Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights at Southern Cross University (1999-2014). He has also had visiting positions at Indiana University, the University of Auckland, and La Trobe University. In 2021 he was appointed an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) ‘for distinguished service in tertiary education in the field of human rights, social justice and cultural diversity.'

Professor Offord is a member of IAFOR’s Academic Governing Board. He is Chair of the Cultural & Area Studies section of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Keynote Presentation (2024): TBA

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2021): Engaging with Culture: A Conversation on Decolonising the Future
Keynote Presentation (2020): The Relevance of the Humanities and Arts in Uncertain Times
Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes
Curtin University, Australia

Biography

Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes is a researcher, writer, and poet from Lalibela, Ethiopia. He currently lives in Whadjuk Noongar Boodja (Perth, Western Australia), where he is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, Australia. Drawing from the history, philosophy, and experiences of marginalised people, Dr Woldeyes contributes critical insights for reimagining the future and addressing epistemic and racial injustices. He researches African experience and Ethiopian traditions and writes creatively on diasporic lives and belonging. His research in education focuses on applying critical pedagogy and indigenous knowledges for transformative learning. Dr Woldeyes has won various university awards for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching. His publications include the sole authored book Native Colonialism: Education and the Economy of Violence Against Traditions in Ethiopia (New Jersey: The Red Sea Press, 2017), and the co-edited (with Offord, Fleay, Hartley and Chan) Activating Cultural and Social Change: The Pedagogies of Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2022). Currently, Dr Woldeyes is one of the chief investigators in a new Australian Research Council funded discovery project titled Roads to the Future: Infrastructure and new Development in Africa.

Keynote Presentation (2021): Future-Focused Education through Critical Appreciative Dialogue

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2021): Engaging with Culture: A Conversation on Decolonising the Future
The Horizon of Our Common Cause: Narratives, Ideas and Conviviality
Keynote Presentation: Baden Offord

Humanity faces existential crises that cannot be ignored; perilous futures are at our door with civilizational and planetary integrity teetering. Democratic institutions are in chaos and technological disruption is dominant. Given this, what mindset and energies are now required to deal with the enormous complexity, scale, and implications posed by problems such as nuclear weapons, climate change, AI, epistemic violence, political impunity, widespread poverty, and cultural infallibility? By what means and with what intellectual and creative tools can we respond to these urgent matters about human society and its survival? Drawing on the best of what the humanities can offer in this critical context, this presentation will focus on a horizon that invokes (1) the urgent necessity to create new narratives of co-existence; (2) developing and enabling robust intellectual and creative spaces for the emergence of salient ideas; and (3) forming a collective common cause, framed through muscular, critical, but also humble, sensitised conviviality.

Read presenter's biography
Future-Focused Education through Critical Appreciative Dialogue
Keynote Presentation: Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes

As our world faces complex challenges and boundless opportunities at the same time, education plays a key role in the emergence of just and sustainable futures. This paper proposes Critical Appreciative Dialogue (CAD) as a basis for developing future focused pedagogical practices. In this paper, being “critical” means seeking to liberate life from its confinement by dominant power structures and to resist the epistemic violence that invalidates diverse ways of knowing and becoming. To be “appreciative” means to inquire into life’s survivability; to name its values, potentials, and demands. Being critical of the totalising effects of power and appreciative of the survivability of life, CAD presents future focused education as a decolonial and pluriversal dialogue. This paper is informed by more than ten years of research and teaching at the Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, Western Australia. At the Centre, we invite individuals that have rich lived experiences and scholars from diverse cultural and religious worlds to engage in dialogue with our students. Taking classroom encounters as important opportunities for engaging in the everyday questions and challenges of existence, we identify key pedagogical lessons that could guide the future of education as an inclusive, reflexive, dynamic, and contextually relevant field that responds to the memories and aspirations of multiple cultural worlds as well as to the ethical demands of our time and the future. CAD is informed by these unique pedagogical encounters, as well as research from the Global South, Grassroots Movements, and Minoritized Communities.

Read presenter's biography
The Work of the University in Perilous Times
Keynote Presentation: Donald E. Hall

AsAs wars rage across the globe and as narcissistic politicians stoke mistrust in institutions—fanning the flames of racism and anti-intellectualism—the university campus has become a battleground over questions of social justice and fact-based understandings of history and the roots of inequality. Japanese, American, and European institutions have certainly seen past instances of such violent clashes over the very purpose of higher education, but today we find political interest groups using both mass and social media to incite conflict in new and shocking ways. We who work at universities are on the front lines—whether as students, professors, staff members, or administrators. We must be prepared to act bravely, but also tactically, as guardians of historical truth, as defenders of science, and as advocates for the needs of those groups and individuals easily scapegoated.

This is not a call to martyrdom. However, if we are not clever and subversive, we will lose the very positionality that enables our work and effectiveness.

In this address which will reference (among others) works by Michel de Certeau and Michel Foucault, both of whom were embroiled in the radical politics that shook late 1960s French higher education, I will argue for the use of multivalent tactics that are radical in intent but also self-protective in nature.

In drawing on examples from an international array of academic institutions, as well as works of fiction, film, and theory, I will ask conference members to take the work of IAFOR—its advocacy for international, intercultural, and interdisciplinary understanding—back to their home campuses. Indeed, the empathy, self-awareness, and commitment to understanding that we learn to exercise at IAFOR conferences represent critical skill sets that we must draw on as we wrestle with and respond to the growing volatility of our academic lives.

Read presenter's biography