International Organizing Committee
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Gopal Aryal (officially BHAWANI ARYAL) is an actor, director and social theatre practitioner based in Nepal. He is using theatre as tool for children, youth and women empowerment, social transformation and education in Nepal since 2007. Gopal is true devotee of the theatre and a true artist. He loves theatre and has unique capacity for transmitting that love to others. Gopal has conducted over hundred theatre workshops and has directed many social theatre performances during his working period. Gopal’s works in the field of psychosocial healing and community integration in Nepal after the 2015 earthquake and in Italy for earthquake survivors are also remarkable. He has also facilitated “Theatre for Social Healing” workshop in Amsterdam and Alaska. Gopal is now on a journey to establish an international hub/centre for social theatre practitioners in Nepal.
Gopal Aryal
Actor, Director, Social Theatre Practitioner
Lukeko Gaun, A village for arts and farming, Nepal
María José Bejarano was born in Costa Rica. She has a degree in psychology and specialized in Dance Movement Therapy in Argentina. She recently completed Erasmus+ Choreomundus Program in Dance Knowledge, Practice and Heritage in Hungary, Norway, France and London. She has worked on the empowerment of vulnerable communities through play and participated in several activities related to play, community and creativity in Costa Rica, Uruguay, Argentina and Colombia. Her interests are related to social transformation and developing Human Rights initiatives through expressive arts. As a community dance artist, she is currently developing Proyecto Colibrí – Acompañamiento Creativo, a Costa Rica-based initiative that aims for community development through community dance and Intangible Cultural Heritage, as well as the research of corporeal tools for social change and sustainable development. Her academic research has deepened on the relationships of dance, community and territory. Recently she expands life experience by learning to play the ukulele.
Majo Bejarano
Dance Movement Therapist, Psychologist, Community Dance Artist
Proyecto Colibrí – Acompañamiento Creativo, Costa Rica
Martina Čurdová is a theatre director, performer, lecturer and drama therapist. She studied Creative Drama and Alternative Theatre at Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Czech Republic. After she explored various forms of community and social theatre, studying in Barcelona, Spain and at Centro de Teatro do Oprimido in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has been working with communities in Latin America, Africa and Europe, applying theatre as a tool of personal liberation and social transformation. Martina works mainly with communities in need of support, using diverse techniques ranging from documentary devised theatre to social circus.
Martina Čurdová
Theatre director, performer, lecturer and drama therapist, Czech Republic
My name is Marilia Fotopoulou and I’m really glad to present myself as a member of the wonderful PPLG community. I am a 20 year old Psychology student coming from Sparta, Greece. My creative interests and experiences so far are related to poetry, drama, music and volunteering with refugees and pre-school children in Greece and Poland! I am strangely enthusiastic about learning new languages and especially the Nordic ones.
Marilia has been part of the committed Volunteer Team of PPLG 2019
Marilia Fotopoulou
Psychology student, Greece, Sweden
Juan is a musician, music educator and a project development consultant with key focus on social integration of at-risk communities and children including refugees. He focuses on creating a positive impact on people through the communication and team dynamics found in music. His work started in Colombia at the Pontificia Javeriana University as a teacher and researcher for the arts department where he directed the popular music area of the Youth Music Program from 2004 to 2012. Today, he is still connected to the university as a guest lecturer at the Music Formation Methodologies program. Later he underwent Music Management studies in Norway and Creative Industries / Event Management studies in Germany where he subsequently worked as youth programs director for Tontalente, a nonprofit organization focused on cultural integration through music for refugee kids and young adults in Lübeck, Germany where he also managed, conducted and composed for the Children’s District Orchestra of Eichholz. He currently lives in The Netherlands doing music creation combining middle east, European and Latin-American cultures and as an advisor for creative projects in the development and incubation phase helping creative individuals and organizations in the field of the arts, education and social impact and creative industries to connect the dots and find new ways of turning ideas into projects.
Juan David Garzón
Professional Musician and Music Educator, Netherlands and Colombia
Becky trained as an actor at London’s Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, and has worked extensively as an actor and facilitator with some of the UK’s leading Community Theatre and Arts companies she founded Olive Branch Arts in 2006. Responding to the growing need for a level of psychological support in much of Olive Branch’s work she completed an MA in Drama and Movement Therapy at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She is currently training at RSCCD in Creative Arts Supervision. Becky runs a private practice for individuals and groups in North and South London. She is also Head of Creative Arts Therapies for the charity www.playforprogress.com delivering therapeutic work with unaccompanied child refugees. She has presented work at The Sesame Institute, University College London, London School of Economics Refugee Week, PPLG Conference Thessaloniki, Storytelling for Refuge/Storytelling as Refuge University of South Wales, Bristol Fair Saturday & Rebel Tuesdays.
Becky Hall
Dramatherapist, Founder of Olive Branch Arts, United Kingdom
Raven Kaliana directs Puppet (R)Evolution. She’s presented Hooray for Hollywood, her award-winning film on human trafficking at London City Hall, UN Geneva, and Commission on the Status of Women. She performed Love vs Trauma in Beijing; Puerto Rico; London at Little Angel Theatre; Birmingham at Broken Puppet Symposium; and at Brighton Fringe Festival in the UK. She also directed Understanding Post-Traumatic Stress, a shadow animation, and was interviewed in Stories of Healing, a documentary on using creativity to heal. She’s developed Transforming Trauma and Rehearsing Resilience workshops, for using puppetry as a tool for trauma recovery. Her work has been chronicled in New York Times; Guardian; BBC .
Raven Kaliana
Puppeteer, Workshop Facilitator
Puppet (R)Evolution, Brighton, United Kingdom
David Kiwanuka, male Ugandan full time Community Worker. I work for a non government organization as its administrator and a teacher for Christian Religious Education in our primary school.
David Kiwanuka Naggenda
Community Worker, Teacher
Hope For Youth – Kampala, Uganda
Theodoros Kostidakis is a dramatherapist (MA Drama and Movement Therapy from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama) and a shadow puppeteer (Greek traditional Karaghiozis) based in London. He also has a first degree and MA in architecture. Theodoros has worked as a drama teacher, performer, facilitator and/or dramatherapist with socially excluded children, unaccompanied asylum seekers and refugees in Greece, Cyprus and the UK. He currently works as a therapist and National Manager for the Refugee Council with unaccompanied children and adolescents seeking asylum in the UK. Theodoros has presented his work at several conferences; organised by the British Association of Dramatherapists, University of South Wales, the Royal Anthropological Institute and the British Museum, among others. His main interests include the notions of space/place and shadow play in dramatherapy.
Thodoris Kostidakis
Dramatherapist, national manager of therapeutic services for separated refugee children of the British Refugee Council
London, United Kingdom
I am born in Pireus in 1968. In 1992 I graduated from the University of Athens – School of Philosophy – Department of Philosophy – Pedagogy – Psychology In 1996 I studied in theUniversity of Picardi-Jules Vernes in Maitrise de Psychology Clinic and 1998 I graduated from the University Paris7 -Jussieu with the degree of DEA d’Etudes Litteraires – Sciences des texts et des documents . 1993-1996 I worked in mental health institutions in Greece (social psychiatry facilities) 1998-2001 in detention places for minors organizing the art and creative workshops and in day center for minors. 2001-2010 I worked in the International office of Aegean Univeristy and parallel to that I created short documentaries and films as well as scripts for fiction films. Since 2005 I am involved in refugee support groups in Lesvos and since 2008 I participate in Kayki a Turkish Greek network for raising awareness about deaths in Aegean sea and support of victims of tragedies in the sea. In 2012 I participated in the creation and since in supporting Pikpa- Lesvos the first independent welcoming shelter for refugees in Greece. More than 30.000 refugees have been supported by Pikpa which was the first shelter in Lesvos providing support to vulnerable refugees and victims of sea tragedies. 2013-2014 I was coordinating the emergency response support program of MDM in the port of Lesvos and later in Moria when the first reception center started to operate. 2014 I worked for the border death research program of the University of Amsterdam collecting datas from the registries since 2014 till today I am working with Refugee support Aegean providing social support to very vulnerable refugees and victims of shiprecks Since 2016 I am member of the team of Mosaik support and cultural center in Lesvos. In 2016 I received the NANSEN UNHCR award as member of Pikpa solidarity camp work. In 2018 as member of an NGO created by 4 women in Lesvos we started NAN social restaurant where refugees and locals cooking together creating integrational and social interaction opportunities.
Efi Latsoudi
Lesvos Solidarity, Greece
Uri Noy Meir was born in Zefat in the Northern Galilee, Israel. The story he was brought up with shattered into pieces following his military service. And as result of it he has chosen to weave a process of self-healing with the path of the artist, the researcher, and the activist. As a facilitator he is integrating in his work Social Presencing Theater, Dragon Dreaming and Theatre of the Oppressed and has facilitated groups in Senegal, Nepal, India, Holland, the US, the UK, Spain, Estonia, France, Italy, Israel-Palestine, Georgia, Croatia, and Greece. Nowadays he is based in central Italy and works as consultant that is employing Theory U, to support local and regional organizations in adapting to the age of complexity. He with the Presencing Institute international network of action researchers, is engaged in process of co sensing and developing Social Presencing Theater as tool for future anticipation and and the understanding of transitions in social fields.
Uri Noy Meir
Facilitator of Theatre of the Oppressed and Social Presencing Theatre, ImaginAction, Italy
Ilaria Olimpico is a facilitator and a trainer in the field of Social Arts.
She is co-founder of the collective TheAlbero – thealbero.wordpress.com – and a member of ImaginAction – imaginaction.org.
She holds a BA in International and Diplomatic Sciences at University Orientale in Naples. She is weaving Aesthetics of the Oppressed, Social Presencing Theater, and Participative Storytelling in a living method to facilitate spaces of awareness, social research, co-learning, conflict transformation and salutogenesis. She is training in Gendlin’s method Focusing, with the intention to integrate it more and more as a peculiar facilitation approach.
She has been working for more than 10 years as facilitator/trainer in intercultural and peace education programs. In the last years she has been working as facilitator in EU projects with refugees, asylum seekers and mygrants, applying the Theory U approach. During the pandemic, she developed the online format “Stories that reconnect” with groups of women, groups of refugees and locals, groups of activists. She is starting a collaboration with the University of Florence in the project Love Storm for training and action against online hate.
Ilaria writes stories on TheAlbero.wordpress.com and orientexpress.na.it
Ilaria Olimpico
Facilitator and Trainer in Social Arts
TheAlbero Artistic Collective, ImaginAction, Italy
Linda Raule is a participatory theatre practitioner and cultural and social scientist, who works in Theatre of the Oppressed Vienna, Austria since 2016 (www.tdu-wien.at) and teaches at the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany (FHWS). 2016 she graduated in a training as an actress at schauspielfabrik Berlin and 2019 she finished her Master’s degree in Development studies at University of Vienna. Her research interest is in Theatre Action Research, embodied knowledge, intersectionality, feminist and decolonial criticism of science as well as social justice education. The focus of her artistic and political work is on Theatre of the Oppressed combined with feminist body knowledge, dance and various forms of participatory and artistic expression. She is particularly interested in the idea of combining art and social sciences, thereby encouraging people to reflect and act together. Currently she is working in projects about WLINT*-bodies in patriarchy, precarious work and mental health in capitalism.
Linda Raule
Participatory theatre practitioner, teacher at the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany
TdU Wien, Austria
Biomedical engineer now focused on social innovation to create a better world for people and the planet. I have three kids and spent many decades travelling the world helping healthcare organizations to improve human experience, patient safety, clinical outcomes and population health.
Out of curiosity and necessity, I am a serial student who enjoys community transformation proceses. I have been very lucky practicing Jivamukti Yoga with Sharon Gannon, Psicodrama with Roberto de Inocencio, Forum Theatre with Héctor Aristizábal and Theatre for Living with David Diamond; I was honored to finish translating his book (now available as Teatro para la Vida in Spanish).
Juanjo Rubio
Biomedical engineer focused on social innovation
Pamplona, Spain
Elena Skreka is a Dramatherapist, specialising in working with children and adolescents. She has worked in schools with bereaved children and children with social, emotional and mental health needs. She currently works as a psychotherapist for a charity, supporting unaccompanied children who are refugees or are seeking asylum in the UK. She is also a Language, Literature and Drama teacher and a physical performance artist with the international theatre Ensemble ‘Foxtale’. She has studied Drama and Movement Therapy, Theatre and Drama, Physical Theatre, English and American Literature and Culture, Linguistics and Translation.
Elena Skreka
Dramatherapist, London, United Kingdom
Mohamed Sleiman Labat is an artist from the Saharawi refugee camps in southwest Algeria. He was born and raised there. His entire life, he has been a refugee in a camp in a foreign country. Rather than being discouraged or seeking happiness elsewhere, he chose to remain and help inspire his community through art. He works with different art genres and mediums. He often introduces himself as simply ‘a maker’. He’s a calligrapher, a poet, a photographer, a sculptor, a painter and an art facilitator among other things. Coming from a desert culture, He’s familiar with a long tradition of oral expression (indigenous Saharawi poetry and stories) and he likes to combine this with visual art. Recently, he experimented with utilizing discarded materials such as fabric, scraps of wood, metal, plastic and utilitarian objects to create sculptures. This experimentation equipped him with skills and ideas that led to creating MOTIF, his studio in the camps. The studio now is an active hub for art creation and art education. He dream is to create this space for art experimentation in order to devise alternative ways to learning, creating and expressing. He now organizes social activities for young people to meet, to exchange and to create together. He believes art is bringing change to his community.
Mohamed Sulaiman Labat
Artist, Founder of Motif Art Studio & Workshop, Saharawi Refugee Camps, Algeria
Tom is a Canadian-born & raised human, currently based in The Netherlands. He’s trained as an urban planner. and his 15 years of experience focuses on participation and citizen-led initiatives in affordable housing, sustainability and the local economy. Tom also facilitates & performs improv theater and passionately advocates for participatory arts as a method for more inclusive & creative planning.
His current focus is on co-creating new models for self-managed communities, in which everyone – including marginilised communities – are invited to play a role. That’s powered by innovative methodologies that use play, participatory arts and digital / data tools that support citizens in taking the lead. Many of these innovations are being developed in an urban laboratory of Rotterdam West, powered by a new form of neighbourhood-owned social enterprise that we are preparing to share internationally.
Tom’s international work includes leading initiatives for UN-Habitat’s Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme and creating a mixed-income neighbourhood master plan in Camdeboo, South Africa. He works closely with participatory arts-based communities of practice in Budapest & Barcelona and is an active member of the International Society of City and Regional Planners, including co-curating the 2015 world congress in Rotterdam.
Tom Van Gheest
Urban planner, community developer, improv theater facilitator and performer
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
There is a hotel on Lesbos very different from other hotels: Hotel Votsala run by Daphne Vloumidi and Iannis Troumpounis. At votsalahotel.com the family and the staff make you fall in love with Lesvos and become friends. Daphne has been involved as a volunteer already since 2000. Her preferable work was helping families with children and unaccompanied minors.
Because of Daphne’s engagement, several guests of the hotel started to help too. This is how it all started and in 2012 the Greek/German Odysseas was founded together with the guests-friends. http://www.odysseas.at.
One very successful Votsala-initiative has been to organise football meetings between children of locals, tourists and refugees already since 2010. “Come together and play football” is a big event, twice every season, at the Votsala seaside gardens. Before the game children make a circle and with the help of translators talk about friendship, family and how life is in their countries. After the tourney we seat in smaller tables and eat together.
In 2015, during the refugee crisis, guests and hotel staff helped the refugees who arrived exhausted.
In 2017, Daphne published her first children book with protagonist a little elephant-refugee who arrives on the island of Lesvos: Quilombo, the scruffy little elephant (Quilombo, der kleine schmutzige Elephant).
In 2018, Daphne was honoured at the “Giardino Dei Giusti Di Milano” as one of the “Righteous of Hospitality” by Gariwo, the Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide; a non-profit organisation in the service of memory.
In 2019 Daphne published her second children book, with the little elephant-refugee who lives now on Lesvos facing several difficulties: Quilombo and the Sport Therapist.
Daphne with her husband Iannis visit often schools, libraries or camps and with their figures/puppet theatre they “read” the Quilombo’s adventures on Lesvos, talking with the children about diversity.
Daphni Vloumidi
Founder of “Odysseas”, Writer, Hotel Owner
Lesvos, Greece
Scientific Committee
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Jorge lives in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, is the Coordinator of the undergraduate program of Pedagogy at the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional del Estado de Chihuahua (UPNECH). Has a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics Education and a Masters in Community Education, also has the training in Social Therapy by the East Side Institute of New York. He has more than 20 years of experience working with NGO’s. He is a founding member of the Fred Newman Center for Social Therapy in Ciudad Juárez where the practice of Social Therapy is taking place with different groups, such as students, teachers, young people, parents and NGO members in order to build community in different ways of also developing personal growth. In 2017 Performing Communities the Esperanza Coalition was born on the US-Mexico Border. With the collaboration with the Institute of Improvisation and Social Action (ImprovISA) based in El Paso Texas, Jorge participated in this process as a founding member.
Jorge Burciaga-Montoya
Professor of Pedagogy and Community Development, Universidad Pedagógica Nacional del Estado de Chihuahua (UPNECH) Campus Juárez, Mexico
Mariamalia Cob Delgado lives in Osa, Costa Rica. She is a Microbiologist, MSc in Epidemiology, directs the clinical laboratory of the “Hospital Tomás Casas Casajús”, of the “Caja Costarricense del Seguro Social”. She also conducts research in epidemiology with the University of Costa Rica. In her quest to achieve a more humane treatment with her patients she was trained as a therapeutic clown. And in the year 2015 founded the group “Burumbun Community Clown Project”, a collective of artists and volunteers who use the clowning as a tool of social integration. Currently, Burumbun is working on the construction of a mental health prevention program through clowning for children and adolescents in areas of social risk.
Mariamalia Cob Delgado
Microbiologist, MSc in Epidemiology, director of the clinical laboratory of the “Hospital Tomás Casas Casajús”, of the “Caja Costarricense del Seguro Social”. Founder of the group “Burumbun Community Clown Project”, Costa Rica
Rosina Eleni Filippidou, started as a professional dancer and dance teacher. Then acquired her BSc (Hons) in Psychology, an MSc in Psychological Research Methods from The Open University and a PGdip in Drama and Movement therapy from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. She is also a certified EMDR therapist. As a psychotherapist, she has worked in private therapeutic centers, psychiatric hospitals, centers for rehabilitation of people with learning difficulties and shelters for children and adolescents at risk. The last two years she worked as a psychologist at the psychiatric ward of the General Hospital of Thessaloniki Ippokrateio. She has participated with oral presentations and workshops, in numerous European and National conferences and has published articles referring to the importances of arts in therapy. She now holds two private offices as psychotherapist, in Athens and Thessaloniki (Greece). She is the manager and scientific coordinator of the Institute for Therapy and Education Through Arts EPINEIO, that holds a three year dramatherapy educational course in Thessaloniki.
Rosina Eleni Filippidou
Psychologist, Dramatherapist, Founder of Epineio, Institute for Therapy and Training through Arts, Greece
Ellen Foyn Bruun is Associate Professor of Drama and Theatre at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU. She has a professional background as stage director, playwright/dramaturge and drama educator from various contexts. Ellen likes to teach and conduct research through a combination of practice and theory. At NTNU she teaches theatre production, applied theatre and dramatherapy. Her research centers on drama- and theatre-based action methods, their applications and impact. She is a trained dramatherapist and an Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework who has published articles and book chapters in English, German and Norwegian. For several years she has participated actively in Nordic and international networks where arts and health are focus, within dramatherapy and voicework. Some recurring questions she asks are: How do we stage ourselves? What kind of powers are at stake? How do we facilitate and organize arts processes that create new meaning, good health and have societal relevance?
Ellen Foyn Bruun
Associate Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Chair of the Theatre Studies Dept. at Western Galilee academic college in the multicultural town of Akko, Israel also lecturer and acting and improvisation instructor at Tel Aviv University Theatre arts dept. I am particularly concerned with “Inter/ multi – cultural dialogue in the dramatic space” and the way in which this practice impacts people and can change attitudes and the ability to contain and empathize with other people’s lives, beliefs and histories. I have been fortunate to have acquired international experience and expertise in the application of theatre practices and performance for empowering human rights issues, dialogue in conflicted communities, relations in the work place, prisoner, sex workers and substance user rehabilitation.
Peter Harris
Professor of Theatre at Tel Aviv University and Chair of the Theatre Studies Dept. at Western Galilee academic college
Tel Aviv, Israel
Jones Irwin is Associate Professor in Philosophy and Education at the Institute of Education, Dublin, Republic of Ireland. From 2014 until September 2019, he was seconded as Project Officer with NCCA on the multi-denominational curriculum in Community National Schools, the first state curriculum in values in Ireland. He has previously lectured at University of Warwick, UK, and Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick and has been Visiting Lecturer at several universities including the University of Warwick (2010/2013), Ljubljana, Slovenia (2010), Linköping, Sweden (2010/2013) and University of Catania, Sicily (2018/19).
His research and teaching interests are currently in the areas of Philosophy of Education, Multi-Denominational Ethos, Values Education, Aesthetics and Early Years Education. He has published three main books to date, including the first text to explore Paulo Freire’s educational philosophy in toto.
Jones Irwin
Associate Professor, Philosophy and Education
Institute of Education
Dublin City University, Ireland
Makiko Kishi (Mako) An associate professor, Meiji University in Tokyo. My Major is Educational Technology (Designing a Learning Environment）
Please see the detail: shorturl.at/dzN89 .
Created/developed various kinds of educational activities/materials with UNs, NGOs, Universities, communities in Syria（2002-2011）, Palestine（2005-to the present）, Turkey（2016-2019）, Myanmar
(2008-2011）India (2009-to the present) and Japan.
Makiko Kishi
Associate Professor, Educational Technology (Designing a Learning Environment)
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan
Warren Linds is Associate Professor, Department of Applied Human Sciences, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada and Graduate Program Director of the Masters in Human Systems Intervention in the same department. He has had extensive experience in applied theatre, particularly with Theatre of the Oppressed and Playback Theatre, and community development. He worked for ten years with Indigenous youth in southern Saskatchewan, Canada on Acting Out! But in a Good Way, an applied arts program on wellness and wellbeing as part of the Indigenous Peoples Health Research Centre in partnership with File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council Health Services Youth Action Program (YAP). His interests are in Arts-based research and inquiry, ethical practice and social justice. This background has been critical to his teaching approach where he brings practical experiences and theoretical approaches together. Dr. Linds has published in the areas of group facilitation, anti-oppression and anti-racism pedagogy, the fostering of youth leadership, and arts-based approaches to working with war-affected youth in Montreal and around the world. He is co-editor (with Elinor Vettraino) of Playing in a Hall of Mirrors. Applied Theatre as Reflective Practice (Sense, 2015) and (with Linda Goulet and Ali Sammel), Emancipatory practices: Adult/youth engagement for social and environmental justice (Sense, 2010).
Warren Linds
Associate Professor Human Sciences, Graduate Program Director of the Masters in Human Systems Intervention
Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Carrie Lobman (New York, USA) MEd is associate professor and chair of the Department of Learning and Teaching at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education, the director of the revolutionary conversations series at the East Side Institute and a member of the All Stars Project Board of Directors. Carrie was born into a family of revolutionaries and community activists and has over the decades combined that passion with her equally strong commitment to the power of play and performance for human development. She is a self-proclaimed play revolutionary and performance activist. As an educational researcher she has examined the relationship between play, performance, learning and development for people of all ages and the importance of outside of school programs for providing young people with developmental experiences. She is a trained social therapist and a core faculty member in the Institute’s international training programs.
Carrie Lobman
Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Learning and Teaching at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education, New York, USA
Kostas Magos has a degree on Teacher Education from the University of Athens and a Ph.D on Intercultural Education from the same University. He has worked as a primary school teacher and as a researcher in many intercultural projects for minority and Roma children. Since 2007 he is a lecturer and since 2013 an Assistant Professor in the Department of Early Childhood Education at the University of Thessaly on the field of intercultural education. His scientific interests include the theory and practice of intercultural education, the education of immigrant, minority and Roma children, the use of action research and narrative inquiry in teacher education and school practices. He has participated in many European projects concerning best practices for the education of minority and immigrant children, European educational actions against racism and xenophobia and European teacher training seminars in intercultural education. He is the writer of many articles concerning issues of intercultural education theory and practice. During his free time he likes to write books for children. Until today 20 children books written by Kostas are already published.
Kostas Magos
Associate Professor of Preschool Education, University of Thessaly, Greece
Andres Marquez-Lara is the Founder and Passion Catalyst at Promethean Community LLC, a social enterprise that helps organizations create synergies for success. They work with teams that want to improve their efficiency in tackling social and environmental impact projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. With a dynamic, inclusive methodology that blends approaches from design thinking, improv theater, and systems thinking, their interactive workshops help groups connect, collaborate, create and complete their projects.
Andres holds teaching positions at both Georgetown University and George Washington University where he teaches on leadership, innovation and facilitation. He has collaborated with multiple national and international organizations that include the Inter-American Development Bank, Pan-American Health Organization, Open Government Partnership, and others.
In 2014, he was named one of the emerging social innovators of the year in North America by Ashoka and American Express. He earned a BA in psychology from Duke University, and a graduate degree in clinical community psychology from the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello in Caracas, Venezuela.
Andres Marquez Lara
Lecturer of Transformative Leadership, Georgetown University, Psychologist, Founder and Passion Catalyst at Promethean Community LLC, Washington, USA
Morgane Masterman is a French-British intercultural activist living in Portugal. She has a bachelor’s in translation for French, English, and German, and a master’s degree in Portuguese literature. However, when she started working as translator, she quickly realized that translation was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to mutual understanding between cultures, and in 2011 she started involving herself in grassroots feminism and local human rights struggles. Since 2013 she has been working in the field of European mobility and intercultural education. From 2013 to 2017 she was employed by association Clube Intercultural Europeu in Lisbon, and since 2018 she is a freelance intercultural and linguistic animator certified by the French-German Youth Office. In 2018 she was one of the founders of Associação Faísca Voadora, a small organisation in Almada aiming to challenge the traditional ways of embracing interculturality and European mobility by connecting intercultural education, arts, and activism. Her preferred tools are comics, theatre of the oppressed, amateur radio, and language animation.
Morgane Masterman
Associação Faísca Voadora
Almada, Portugal
Tamara Nikolić (Belgrade, Serbia) is Assistant Professor at the Department for Pedagogy and Andragogy at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade and a reasearcher at the Institute for Pedagogy and Andragogy. She holds a Ph.D. in Adult Education from the University of Belgrade and M.A. in Human Relations from the University of Nottingham. Being East Side Institute’s Associate keeps deepening her interest in the intersections of play and performance, adult learning and community building, which she continues to pursue theoretically and practically. Her recent research involves topics such are leisure education, creative learning environments, drama and theatre in education, and the role of improvisation in educational settings. As an educational professional, she teaches adult education related to leisure, communication and media, play, creativity and drama. As a freelancer, she delivers trainings for trainers, mentors and other professionals in the field of education, engages in supervision and counselling for educators and designs and facilitates workshops. As a lifelong learner, she is currently working her way towards M.A. in Applied Theatre at Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. She co-authored the publication “Let’s Play – A Manual for Drama Process”.
Tamara Nikolić
Associate Professor of Adult Education
University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
Dr. Dora Psaltopoulou-Kamini is an Assistant Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (A.U.Th-GR). She is a certified music therapist CMT (AMTA), holds a Ph.D (A.U.Th-GR) and an MA (NYU, NY-USA). She has completed her psychoanalytic training in Freudian, Lacanian approach. She is a visitor Lecturer at the master level programs at the University of Macedonia (Music Therapy), at the University of Nicosia, at the University of Thessaly, at TEI of Larissa. She is a research assistant at the Adolescent Unit of the 3rd Psychiatric Clinic (University Hospital AHEPA). She has published in Greek two academic e-books (Music Therapy: The Third Way and Communication in Music Therapy-Paideia. The Co.M.P.A.S.S Approach) at Kallipos (repository.Kallipos.gr). Her music therapy life journey has been published in 2017 at ‘Lives of Music Therapists’ (Vol. I, Barcelona Publishers).
Dora Psaltopoulou
Assistant Professor of Music Studies, Music Therapist, Aristotle University, Fine Arts Department, Visitor Lecturer: University of Macedonia, University of Nicosia, University of Thessaly, TEI Larissa, Research Assistant University Hospital of AHEPA, Greece
Dr Tsompanaki Eleni obtains Bachelor in Dance and Professional Practice (Coventry University), Master of Philosophy in Dance and Theatre Arts (University of Birmingham), PhD in Dance in Education (University of Birmingham). She has taught contemporary dance, creative dance, improvisation and somatics at Coventry University, Greek National School of Dance and in various private dance schools in Greece. She was a basic coordinator of community dance for primary school teachers in the ‘Melina Programme: Education and Culture’, in the Operational Programme “Education and Lifelong Learning” Education of Roma children” and a lecturer in educational programmes for diversity groups and minorities. Moreover, she gives lectures about semiotics of dance and community dance on postgraduate courses at the University of Western Macedonia and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is artistic director of the Model Dance School of the Municipality of Kalamaria. From September 2018, she is a professor at the pedagogical department of the University of Thessaly.
Eleni Tsompanaki
Professor of Dance, Community Dance Artist, Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Thessaly, Greece
Mark began his study of Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) and Applied Theatre with Augusto Boal in 1992 and has conducted workshops and theatre-making actions for educators, activists, administrators, students, business leaders, NGOs, and community organizations in the continental U.S., Alaska, Canada, Australia, and Austria. He is co-founder, with Jenny Wanasek, of The Center for Applied Theatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA and was co-founder of the Theatre and Social Change focus group of ATHE. Mark served on the Board of the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Organization for nine years and hosted its ninth annual conference. He earned his MFA in Directing and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and was a professor in the University of Wisconsin system, where he developed the Theatre and Society Program, for thirty years. He has directed nearly sixty productions in academic, community, and professional theatre and during the past eighteen years has served as a teaching artist in Milwaukee Public Schools. He is currently editor of the PTO Journal.
Mark Weinberg
Editor of the PTO Journal, co-founder of The Center for Applied Theatre and Theatre and Social Change focus group of ATHE
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Magda Zenon is a human rights activist whose perspective has been influenced by having lived in apartheid South Africa, Greece, and now Cyprus. She is an active member of civil society with a focus on the implementation of UNSCRes 1325 and the integration of a gender perspective in peace processes, both locally and globally. She has worked with women’s and youth groups and has helped found and been active in a number of local CSO’s including Hands Across the Divide, the Gender Advisory Team and the Cyprus Women’s Lobby that is a member of the European Women’s Lobby. She has also helped co-ordinate a number of multicultural youth peace camps in Cyprus and Turkey with themes that focussed on youth and conflict resolution. Finally, Magda has a passion for story-telling and has for over 5 years hosted conversations about peacebuilding with inspiring women from around the globe on her internet-based women’s forum called kaleid’HER’scope.
Magda Zenon
Journalist, Peace and Human Rights Activist, Founding Member of Hands Across the Divide, Cyprus