About this Event
This year, the PFI Annual Conference will explore how creative, community-rooted approaches to education, healing, and political engagement can serve as tools for liberation according to a Freirean perspective. Drawing on diverse disciplines, theoretical, and pedagogical fields, including education, social work, critical pedagogy, learning technologies, and participatory theater, this conversation brings together practitioners and scholars who center on agency, collectivity, critical consciousness, and embodied practice in their work. Through storytelling, dialogue, and reflection, the session will explore how educational and participatory praxis can challenge structural inequities, promote individual and collective well-being, and reimagine the role of education and create more just realities. Anchored in the legacies of Paulo Freire and decolonial traditions, this event invites educators, students, organizers, artists, and the broader community to consider how creative and innovative educational approaches can transform not only what we learn, but how and why we learn.
Panelists:
Dr. Paulo Blikstein (Teachers College, Columbia University)
Paulo Blikstein is an Associate Professor of Education and an Affiliate Associate Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, where he directs the Transformative Learning Technologies Lab, the Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies, and the Columbia University Paulo Freire Initiative. While at Stanford University, Paulo also co-founded and directed the Lemann Center for Entrepreneurship and Educational Innovation in Brazil, a 10-year initiative dedicated to the transformation of Brazilian public education. Blikstein’s main research, inspired by Freire’s critical pedagogy, focuses on how new technologies can transform the learning of science, engineering, AI, and computation. In 2010, he created the FabLearn program, the first academic initiative to bring maker education to schools, which has since made an impact in 27 countries through its Fellow program, conferences, and school labs. A recipient of the National Science Foundation Early Career Award and the AERA Jan Hawkins Early Career Award, Paulo has published widely in venues such as the Journal of the Learning Sciences, Nature Biotech, the Journal of Engineering Education, and the Journal of Learning Analytics. His work has been featured in The New York Times, ABC News, Scientific American, Wired, and The Guardian. He holds two patents for developing Google Bloks, a tangible programming toolkit for preschool children, and is the co-inventor of the GoGo Board, the first open-source robotics platform for education. Paulo graduated middle school after almost 10 years at the lab school created by Madalena Freire in São Paulo. He earned his Ph.D. from Northwestern University, following an MSc. from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.Eng. and B.Eng. from the University of São Paulo, Brazil.
Dr. Alexis Jemal (Hunter College, CUNY)
Alexis Jemal, LCSW, LCADC, MSW, MA, PhD, associate professor at Silberman School of Social Work-Hunter College, is a critical-radical social worker, scholar-artivist, critical action-intervention researcher, creative writer, and founder of The Briar Patch Collaboratory, a non-profit social enterprise. Dr. Jemal specializes in holistic and multi-level (bio-psycho-social and cultural) humanity-centered world-building and radical healing initiatives guided by her Soulcial Work Praxis framework to achieve health equity for people with marginalized identities. Her work has a clear focus on breaking and healing from intergenerational curses grounded in misogynoir traumatic stress. More recently, she’s worked to integrate applied theatre, critical-radical social work practice, and her Soulcial Work Praxis framework to create Soulcial Theatre Works for research, training, education, and practice (which includes community and cultural organizing, and personal and community development). Lastly, Dr. Jemal is completing a MFA in creative writing with a focus on playwriting.
Geo Britto (Escola de Teatro Popular, Brazil)
Geo Britto is a Ph.D. Student in Theater at the University of São Paulo (USP), founder, and member of the Coordination Team of the Escola de Teatro Popular (ETP) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He worked at the Center for the Theater of the Oppressed (CTO) for 32 years, 20 of those alongside Augusto Boal. Geo holds a Master’s degree in Arts from the Fluminense Federal University (UFF, Brazil). Recently, he published the book Augusto Boal e a Formação do Teatro do Oprimido (Augusto Boal and the Formation of the Theater of the Oppressed), which won 3rd place in the National Library Award in the Social Essay category – Sérgio Buarque de Holanda Prize. He has coordinated and participated in numerous projects in favelas, prisons, mental health institutions, education, culture, and human rights, and has conducted workshops in dozens of countries. Geo is the father of twins, Lorenzo and Jonas.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, New York, United States
USD 0.00
