Unlocking Learning

Maria Garro is a psychologist, senior researcher in dynamic psychology, and instructor of social psychology and forensic psychology in the Department of Psychology, Educational Science, and Human Movement at the University of Palermo (Italy). She is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles on forensic psychology and prison, including “Immigrant Prisoners in Italy: Cultural Mediation to Reduce Social Isolation and Increase Migrant Prisoner Well-Being?” (2022, with M. Schirinzi, C. Novara, and E. Ayllon Alonso) in International Journal of Prisoner Health; “Reversing the Trend: A Psychosocial Intervention on Young Immigrants in Sicily” (2018, with M. Schirinzi) in Journal of International Migration and Integration; and “The ECHR Condemns Prison Overcrowding in Italy: The Total Reorganization of the Institution and the Social Reintegration of the Prisoner” (2017, with F. Cirami) in Journal of Prison Education and Reentry.

Lise Øen Jones, PhD, is a professor at the Institute of Psychosocial Science at the University of Bergen, Norway. She has published books, chapters, and journal articles on topics such as reading and writing difficulties and efficacy beliefs among people in prison, special education in schools, and use of educational technology. Over the last few years, Dr. Jones and her colleagues in the Bergen Cognition and Learning Group have conducted several large-scale studies in Norwegian and Nordic prisons.

Terje Manger holds a doctoral degree from the University of Bergen, Norway, and is a professor emeritus of educational psychology at that university. He has published books and journal articles on topics such as general educational psychology, behavioral psychology, and gender differences in mathematical achievement in school. Dr. Manger and his colleagues in the Bergen Cognition and Learning Group at the University of Bergen have a long record of contributions to research on prison education, and have in recent years conducted several large-scale studies in Norwegian and Nordic prisons, resulting in national and international publications.

Mneesha Gellman is associate professor of political science in the Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College. She is the founder and director of the Emerson Prison Initiative, which brings a BA pathway to incarcerated students at state prisons in Massachusetts. Gellman is the editor of Education Behind the Wall: Why and How We Teach College in Prison (2022). Gellman is the author of Indigenous Language Politics in the Schoolroom: Cultural Survival in Mexico and the United States (2023), and Democratization and Memories of Violence: Ethnic Minority Social Movements in Mexico, Turkey, and El Salvador (2017). She has published widely in both academic journals and popular outlets on a range of issues having to do with democracy and human rights. Gellman serves as an expert witness in asylum cases in U.S. immigration courts for people from Mexico and El Salvador.

Silke Marynissen is a PhD fellow conducting fundamental research for the Flemish Research Foundation at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium). Her research focuses on informal learning and music participation in prison, viewed from the perspective of realist science. She is a member of the research group Participation and Learning in Detention (PALD).

Torfinn Langelid, a candidatus philosophiae in history, is a former senior advisor at the County Governor of Vestland. He was the national coordinator for correctional education in Norway, a member of the Nordic Network for Prison Education for many years, and a member of the steering committee of the European Prison Education Association (EPEA) from 1997 to 2007. He has published articles, reports, and books on prison education and historical perspectives of correctional education.

Aislinn is Professor of Education in the Department of Education and is also a member of the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy.

She received her PhD from the University of Warwick in 2001, having undertaken her studies under the supervision of Keith Ansell Pearson. Her PhD was examined by Paul Gilroy and Christine Battersby. She was awarded both AHRB funding and University of Warwick Funding. She was awarded a Master in Philosophy from University College Dublin where her thesis was supervised by Richard Kearney. She spent a year in Georgetown University on a non-degree postgraduate scholarship studying Government and Philosophy. She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin where she was awarded a BA Mod in Politics and Sociology and where she was elected Scholar in 1993. She also spent an ERASMUS year in the Institut D’Etudes Politiques in Strasbourg where she studied Politics and Sociology.

Through a series of educational and pedagogical projects, both funded and unfunded, and in her teaching of philosophy of education, Aislinn came to situate her work and research in the field and tradition of education. She has worked with different students from primary education to adult education, and has also worked closely with teachers and other educational practitioners on a number of art and philosophy projects. She is particularly interested in building connections and co-creating research between educational practitioners across the continuum of education, including youth work, and in developing collaborative research in teacher education. During her career, she has developed a series of projects and practices that bring together theory and practice in education in creative ways.

Her research and writing explore aesthetics, sensibility, materiality and affect in pedagogies and education. She is particularly interested in ecological approaches to both philosophy and education that open up different contextually sensitive and creative ways of thinking about and understanding the human. As part of this she has developed a number of art and philosophy project in different sites of practice, such as schools and prisons, working with artists, philosophers and curators. These involve developing a range of creative pedagogical practices and her current research involves developing approaches and criteria to evaluate what is of value, rather than what is simply measurable, in these practices. This is also part of participatory action research approach adopted in the EDURAD: Educational Responses to Extremism project.

Mobilising a philosophical lens, Aislinn also engages in researching the ways in which silencing, legacies of violence, willed ignorance, and blind-spots have shaped social, philosophical, political and educational imaginaries. Her research and practice is influenced by writing in race theory, feminist theory and queer theory, in terms of both engaging in critique, and in developing new ways of imagining. She is involved in research and writing that seeks to articulate educational responses to extremism and radicalisation, responses distinct from those with a security lens. In this regard, her work engages with democracy, pluralism, and education, focusing on the cross-section of political theory and educational theory, with a particular focus on belonging and imagining. She has an ongoing interest in prison education, and some of her writing and research has been developed as a response to her experience and engagement with the space of the prison and people who are incarcerated.

Jennifer Coreas is the coordinator and cofounder of the program Literacy for Reconciliation for ConTextos in El Salvador and Chicago. She holds degrees from El Salvador in English as a second language and applied linguistics, and she received a master’s degree in English from Middlebury College in 2018. Her work extends from curriculum development and teaching to advocacy, training, and facilitation of dialogue. She has led the work and the vision for ConTextos’s work in prisons and communities, accompanied authors in their journeys of self-discovery, and brought their stories to hundreds of teachers, psychologists, and social workers in professional development spaces. She has been recognized with numerous fellowships and scholarships including the Rocky Gooch Memorial Scholarship and the Esperanza Fellowship.

Dominika Temiaková is an assistant professor in the Department of Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, at the University of Constantine the Philosopher in Nitra (Slovakia). Her research focuses primarily on the theory and practice of adult education, specifically penitentiary education and staff training. She is the author of the publication Penitentiary and Post-Penitentiary Education (2015, writing as D. Kadlubeková), and Education of Women in Penitentiary Conditions, which examines the education of convicted women in Slovakia (2021).

Marek Lukác is an associate professor at the Institute of Romani Studies at the University of Prešov (Slovakia). His research focuses on social exclusion, the education of marginalized adult Romani, and the education of incarcerated persons. He has published books and articles related to the education of Romani adults, second-chance education, social exclusion, and education in prison. He is a member of the executive committee of the Association of Adult Education Institutions (AIVD) in Slovakia.

Max Kenner is the executive director and Tow Chair for Education and Democracy at the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), which he founded as an undergraduate in 1999. A pioneer among college-in-prison programs, BPI enrolls over three hundred incarcerated students full-time in academic programs culminating in degrees from Bard College; Bard is also home to the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison, which cultivates leaders and institutions in its field, nationally and internationally.

Justin McDevitt is the director of the Women’s College Partnership, a program of the Notre Dame Programs for Education in Prison (NDPEP) in the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame and in collaboration with Marian University and the Bard Prison Initiative. Before that, he served as assistant director for alumni affairs and reentry for the Moreau College Initiative, also a program of NDPEP and in collaboration with Holy Cross College (IN). Justin has taught courses in American politics, urban politics, race and politics, global migration, and interfaith dialogue.

Justin holds a juris doctor (J.D.) from Loyola University Chicago, where his work included field research on labor migration in Chile, farm workers’ rights in central Illinois, and gender-based violence in Tanzania. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in American politics at the University of Notre Dame, where his dissertation research focuses on the political development of collateral consequences of felony convictions. He is also co-founder and executive director of Life Outside, a not-for-profit reentry organization based in South Bend, Indiana.

Liesbeth De Donder is Professor of Adult Educational Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel where she teaches the course “Civil Society and Community Development” and three courses on “Research Methodology.” Her research focuses on (1) Social gerontology – social participation and inclusion of older adults, active caring communities, safety and elder mistreatment; (2) Participation and learning in detention – formal, non-formal and informal education of prisoners; and (3) has a particular interest in participatory methodologies (peer-research, co-construction and action research).

She is promotor of the Compassionate Communities Centre of Expertise, and coordinates the research line “Community Development and Change” in the research group Belgian Ageing Studies. Liesbeth has been coordinator of several national and European projects such as WeDO (wellbeing and dignity of older people), D-SCOPE (Detection, Support and Care of Older people: Prevention and Empowerment), or “Local networking: Caring Communities.” She has received the VUB Excellent PhD Supervision Award in 2021, and has published more than 100 papers in leading peer-reviewed journals in gerontology, care, education and social work.

Gioacchino Lavanco is a professor of Psychology of Community and director of the Department of Psychology, Educational Science, and Human Movement at the University of Palermo (Italy). He is a trainer for the Prison Service and a lifelong educator. He is also the author of several articles and books about social services and well-being in the community, including “Adolescenti e giovani detenuti fra legalità e cultura criminale: la gestione degli eventi critici” (“Adolescents and young prisoners between legality and criminal culture: The management of critical events,” 2018), and “Comunità chiuse, comunità aperte: rimanere chiusi ‘fuori’ dal carcere” (“Closed communities, open communities: Staying closed ‘out’ of prison,” 2017; with C. Novara).

Maria McKenna is a joint faculty member of the Education, Schooling, and Society program and the Department of Africana Studies and an Institute for Educational Initiatives fellow. A Professor of the Practice, her research and teaching focus on the social contexts of American education, educational equity, youth empowerment, and peace education.

McKenna’s research can be found in a variety of peer-reviewed journals. Her most recent collaborative work, The Handbook of Montessori Education (2023), is the first-ever compendium of Montessori education. In her current role at the university, she oversees all of Notre Dame’s scholarly programming for first-generation and historically underserved students from a variety of backgrounds.

Dr. McKenna has been honored with the university’s Reinhold Niebuhr Award for social justice, the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Ganey Collaborative Community-Based Research Grant, and the NAACP Faculty Award. In her spare time, McKenna supports Good Shepherd Montessori School and the Robinson Community Learning Center. She and her husband, Mark, have four children.

McKenna received her B.A. from Notre Dame, an MS Ed. degree from Northwestern University, and a Ph.D. from Saint Louis University.

Grzegorz A. Skrobotowicz, PhD, MBA, is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Executive Law, Faculty of Law, Canon Law, and Administration at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (KUL) in Poland. He received his PhD in 2012 from KUL, with a dissertation entitled Mediation in Criminal Proceedings: Enforcement of Mediation Settlements in Research. His latest research is on why mediation, an extremely important tool for restorative justice, is rarely used in Poland. In 2019, he served as a visiting faculty fellow with the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where he was able to observe an example of American higher education in prison, and he presented to several classes through the Moreau College Initiative, an academic collaboration between Holy Cross College and the University of Notre Dame in partnership with the Indiana Department of Correction.

Massimiliano Schirinzi is an English lecturer in the Department of Psychology, Educational Science, and Human Movement at the University of Palermo (Italy). He is a teacher of Italian L2/LS, a linguistic and cultural mediator, and an oral examiner at the University for Foreigners of Perugia (Italy). He is also the coauthor of the book In Partenza: An Introduction to Italian (2013, with R. Guarino) and coauthor of the articles “Immigrant Prisoners in Italy: Cultural Mediation to Reduce Social Isolation and Increase Migrant Prisoner Well-Being?” (2022, with M. Schirinzi, C. Novara, and E. Ayllon Alonso) in International Journal of Prisoner Health, and “Reversing the Trend: A Psychosocial Intervention on Young Immigrants in Sicily” (2018, with M. Garro) in Journal of International Migration and Integration.

Dorien Brosens is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a senior postdoctoral researcher at the Flemish Research Foundation (Belgium). She is one of the coordinating members of the research group Participation and Learning in Detention (PALD). Her research mainly focuses on peer programs, active citizenship, and innovative types of learning in prison.

Silvia Lukácová is an assistant professor at the Institute of Pedagogy, Andragogy, and Psychology at the University of Prešov (Slovakia). In her research, she focuses on education of the incarcerated, second-chance education, and the education of adults from socially excluded communities. She has published several books and scientific articles and is one of the leading experts on second-chance education in Slovakia.

Chester Lee is the director for Faculty and Academic Support Services on Emerson College’s Kasteel Well campus in the Netherlands. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history and journalism from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and he received his master’s degree in media communication technology and policy from Macquarie University in Australia. He went on to complete his PhD in 1997 at Macquarie University, specializing in cross-cultural communications. His academic concentration is now on areas such as human rights and migration, the European criminal justice systems in a global context, and sex work in Europe (decriminalizing vs. legalizing prostitution), with a focus on promotion of cultural awareness, cross-cultural understanding, and intercultural dialogue.

Michelangelo Capitano has served a long professional career within the Police Justice and Juvenile Prison in Palermo, Italy, including as the director of Italian Juvenile Services. Now retired, his publications on the subject of incarceration include “Devianza adolescenziale. Dalla norma sociale alla norma giuridica” (“Adolescent deviance: From the social norm to the juridical norm,” 2020; with M. Garro); and “I servizi a tutela del minore e della comunità. Il Sistema Giustizia Minorile” (“Services for the protection of minors and the community: The Juvenile Justice System,” 2021; with L. La Bua).

Arve Asbjørnsen, PhD, is a professor of logopedics at the University of Bergen. He has published journal articles on language acquisition, cognitive impairments, and learning challenges, and on similar impairments associated with psychiatric disorders such as major depression, schizophrenia, and posttraumatic stress disorder. In addition, he has made major contributions to learning in a correctional context. Dr. Asbjørnsen is the leader of the Bergen Cognition and Learning Group, which has been responsible for major research projects on correctional education in Norway.

Walter Hammerschick is a vice head and senior researcher at the Department of Applied Sociology of Law and Criminology (IRKS) of the University of Innsbruck, located in Vienna, Austria. He earned his doctorate in law from the University of Salzburg followed by postgraduate studies in Sociology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, United States. Before fully dedicating his professional career to scientific work, he worked for the Austrian Association for Probation Assistance and Social Work. He joined the Institute for the Sociology of Law and Criminology in 1991 as a researcher and was its executive director from 2008 to 2021. Prison research is and has been one of his major fields of interest, including the labor market situation and reintegration of formerly incarcerated people. He has headed and participated in numerous national and European studies in this field, regularly speaking at conferences, giving lectures, and publishing.

Natasha Bidault Mniszek is a coordinator of the Higher Education Program for Social Reintegration Centers of Mexico City (PESCER) of the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM). She previously served as the director of multiple reintegration sites in Mexico for incarcerated people and returning citizens. She holds a master’s degree in crime prevention and penal systems from the Legal and Penitentiary Investigation Institute in Mexico City.