Keynote Speakers
Prof Michalinos ZEMBYLAS
Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies,
Faculty of Economics and Management,
Open University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Honorary Professor, Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation,
Nelson Mandela University, South Africa
Biograhpy
Michalinos Zembylas is Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University of Cyprus and Honorary Professor at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. He currently holds the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) Chair in Open and Distance Learning (2023–2026). His research examines the role of emotion and affect in education, with particular attention to their intersections with social justice, decolonization, and politics.
Keynote Title
“Rethinking Resilience: Affective Climate Injustice and the Education of Global Citizens”
This keynote critically examines the growing prominence of resilience as a defining educational ideal in responses to climate change and sustainable development. While resilience is widely celebrated as an essential capacity that enables young people to cope with uncertainty, adversity, and environmental disruption, this talk asks a different question: what kinds of subjects are produced through resilience discourse, and with what political and emotional consequences? Drawing on critical scholarship on resilience and emerging work on affective climate injustice, I argue that dominant understandings of resilience often individualize responsibility, regulate emotional life, and divert attention from the structural conditions that generate climate vulnerability and inequality. The concept of affective climate injustice highlights how climate-related emotional burdens are unevenly distributed and differentially recognized, shaping whose fear, grief, anger, and suffering become visible and legitimate. Reimagining global citizenship education therefore requires moving beyond resilience alone toward pedagogies that foreground emotion, justice, collective responsibility, and transformative social and educational change.
