Education is a normative human right, but it also serves the practical function of improving domestic and international governance performance. It serves the collective good and betterment of society, and fends humanity from non-traditional security threats such as the global climate crisis, humanitarian emergencies affecting refugees, stateless persons, internally displaced people, and forced migrants, as well as natural disasters, pandemics, and demographic shifts. However, education must compete for resources with other policy sectors, especially in a global climate where realpolitik and national interest dominate policy and budgetary agendas.

At IAFOR’s Paris conference in June 2025, UNESCO Assistant Director General on Education, Dr Stefania Giannini, reminded us that hard power is ill-suited to communicate in today’s polarised world. According to her, soft power, as exercised through education, culture, and the arts, can lead to innovative and peaceful solutions to conflict resolution. In this context, creative industries and the Arts emerge as unexpected but powerful allies, able to generate alternative funding streams and create impactful, awareness-building initiatives, from refugee storytelling to public murals and documentary films.

This panel looks at the importance of education and the arts in fostering peace in a contested space. Overall, while acknowledging the challenges posed to education funding and implementation by geopolitical contestation, this panel identifies opportunities for new actors, initiatives and avenues of innovation.

Biographies

Brendan Howe

Dr Brendan Howe is Professor of the Graduate School of International Studies, Ewha Womans University, South Korea, where he has also served as Dean, Associate Dean, and Department Chair. He is the President of the Asian Political and International Studies Association (APISA), and has been elected to serve as the President of the World International Studies Committee from July, 2025. He is currently a Humboldt Foundation Research Fellow at Heidelberg University, Germany, from 2025 through 2026. He has held visiting professorships and research fellowships at the East-West Center as a POSCO Visiting Research Fellow (United States), the Freie Universität Berlin (Germany), De La Salle University (Philippines), The University of Sydney (Australia), Korea National Defence University (South Korea), Georgetown University (United States), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Malaysia), and Beijing Foreign Studies University (China).

Educated at the University of Oxford, the University of Kent at Canterbury (United Kingdom), Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), and Georgetown University (United States), his research focuses on traditional and non-traditional security in East Asia, human security, middle powers, public diplomacy, post-crisis development, comprehensive peacebuilding, and conflict transformation. He has authored, co-authored, or edited around 150 related publications, including Comprehensive Peacebuilding on the Korean Peninsula (Springer, 2023), Society and Democracy in South Korea and Indonesia (Palgrave, 2022), The Niche Diplomacy of Asian Middle Powers (Lexington Books, 2021), UN Governance: Peace and Human Security in Cambodia and Timor-Leste (Springer, 2020), Regional Cooperation for Peace and Development (Routledge, 2018), National Security, State Centricity, and Governance in East Asia (Springer, 2017), Peacekeeping and the Asia-Pacific (Brill, 2016), and Democratic Governance in East Asia (Springer, 2015).

Maria Montserrat Rifà-Valls

Dr Maria Montserrat Rifà-Valls is Serra Húnter Fellow in Visual Arts Education at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. She completed her PhD in Philosophy and Sciences of Education at the Universitat de Barcelona, Spain. Positioned in feminist and decolonial theories, she specialises in curriculum studies, children's subjectivities, and visual arts. She is currently a researcher in the group ATLAS - Critical Intersections in Education (SGR 01014), and she is also a member of the Institute of Women and Gender Studies (iiEDG). She is the current principal investigator of K Reporters: Reassembling politics across children's cultures to scale intersectional pedagogies (2024–2027, Horizon MSCA-SE).

Dr Rifà-Valls has published in Critical Arts, Ethnography and Education, Visual Inquiry, the International Journal of Education through Art, Gender and Education, and Visual Arts Research. She currently teaches in the Degrees of Early Childhood and Primary Education, in the Degree in Socio-Cultural Studies of Gender, and in the official Master's degree programme in Research in Education (MURE). She has been a visiting researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, among others.

Anne Boddington

Professor Anne Boddington is Executive Vice-President and Provost of IAFOR, and oversees the academic programs, research and policies of the forum.

Anne Boddington is Professor Emerita of Design Innovation and has held executive and senior leadership roles in Higher Education including as Dean of Arts & Humanities at the University of Brighton, Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, Business & Innovation at Kingston and Pro Vice Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange at Middlesex University.

In 2022, she concluded chairing the Sub Panel (32) for Art & Design: History, Practice & Theory as part of the Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) and has extensive experience in the governance and conduct of peer review, research evaluation and assessment in REF2014 (Sub Panel Deputy Chair and Equality Diversity Advisory Panel [EDAP]) and RAE2008. A former member of AHRC’s Advisory Board, she is the current Chair of the Advisory Board for the UKRI’s National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research (NICER) programme (£30M), Deputy Chair and a Trustee of the Design Council, the government’s strategic advisor for design, and a member of both the InnoHK Scientific Committee (Hong Kong) and the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications (HKCAAVQ).

Since the 1990’s Anne has worked across the United Kingdom and internationally with a wide range of quality assurance, professional, statutory, and regulatory bodies in the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East, Hong Kong, and India.

As an independent consultant she now works as a strategic advisor and mentor and is committed to promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion in practice, developing effective governance, supporting career development, reducing bureaucracy, and improving organisational design, integrity, and productivity in the changing workplace.

About the Presenter(s)
-Dr Brendan Howe is Professor of the Graduate School of International Studies, Ewha Womans University, South Korea, where he has also served as Dean, Associate Dean, and Department Chair.
-Dr Maria Montserrat Rifà-Valls is Serra Húnter Fellow in Visual Arts Education at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.
-Professor Anne Boddington is Executive Vice-President and Provost of IAFOR, and oversees the academic programs, research and policies of the forum.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Tuesday Schedule

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