The Geographical Imaginations Expedition & Institute
The Geographical Imaginations Expedition & Institute (The GIEI) is a global citizenship education initiative exploring how people imagine, understand, and relate to the world through geography, culture, systems, and lived experience. Rooted in the belief that geography is not simply the study of places, but the study of relationships, The GIEI creates learning experiences that help people critically examine the mental maps through which they understand themselves, others, and the planet. Drawing inspiration from human geography, storytelling, inquiry, and experiential education, the institute asks a central question: How do the stories, systems, and experiences around us shape our place in the world—and our responsibility to it?
The GIEI began as a multimedia storytelling project that evolved through several phases: visual storytelling and mapmaking, followed by Geographical Imaginations: Radio Expeditions into the Geographies of Everything & Nothing, a long-form radio essay and podcast series broadcast from Radio Fabrik in Salzburg, Austria between 2014–2020. Across 60 episodes, the project explored migration, memory, identity, borders, tourism, inequality, landscape, and everyday life through dialogues with educators, artists, geographers, activists, and communities from around the world. The “expeditions” traveled through Central Europe and beyond—including work produced from Tanzania, Cuba, the USA, and the Arctic—bringing distant places into conversation with local realities and encouraging listeners to move beyond what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls “the single story.”
Today, The GIEI has evolved into a nonprofit institute dedicated to democratizing access to meaningful global citizenship education for teachers, learners, and communities. Its work combines research, advocacy, storytelling, lexicon-building, inquiry, and participatory simulation to help learners better understand interdependence, inequality, systems, and shared planetary futures. The institute’s flagship initiative, The World as a Village of 100 People, transforms global demographic realities into immersive civic-learning experiences where participants explore what it means to live together in an interconnected world. Through dialogue, systems thinking, role work, and citizen assembly models, participants move through three stages: Orientation. Imagination. Transformation.
At its core, The GIEI believes that imagination is a civic practice. In an era defined by ecological uncertainty, polarization, technological change, and global interdependence, the institute works to cultivate the inner and outer capacities needed for more just, reflective, and regenerative futures. The GIEI draws connections between global citizenship education, systems thinking, and the emerging field of Inner Development Goals, emphasizing that outer transformation requires inner development as well. Ultimately, the institute exists to help learners not only understand the world more deeply, but to imagine how it might be otherwise—and to practice shaping that future together.
Kevin S. Fox
Founder & Director
Kevin is a human geographer, global citizenship educator, dialogue facilitator, and experiential learning designer with more than two decades of experience working across international education, public storytelling, and place-based inquiry.
He has taught and mentored learners in the United States, Bolivia, Spain, Austria, Tanzania, Switzerland, and Paraguay, where he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He has also worked with organizations including National Geographic, World Learning, Obama Foundation and globally focused educational programs centered on leadership, cultural exchange, and experiential learning.
Kevin holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Connecticut and an M.A. in Geography from Ohio University. He recently completed a Diploma in Global Leadership through the University for Peace (UPEACE), the UN-mandated university based in Costa Rica. He is an Ambassador for the Inner Development Goals and a Master Beekeeper.
He currently lives in the Spanish Pyrenees.
The GIEI Board
Rukia Hatibu
Board Member
Rukia is an storyteller and educator based in Arusha, Tanzania, with over a decade of experience building learning programs, fabrication labs, and storytelling ventures across East Africa.
She spent five years as Head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Arusha Science School, where she introduced STEM and fabrication training to high school students alongside programs in creative self-expression. As founder of Makini Corner, she writes and publishes short stories and children’s books, and has produced work and events that bring stories in the form of art, installations and performances to communities in Tanzania, Kenya and Ghana.
She currently serves as Product Development Lead at Somo Africa, designing entrepreneurship learning for SMEs across Tanzania and Kenya.
A Mandela Washington Fellow and TEDx speaker, Rukia brings a practitioner’s perspective to global citizenship education, rooted in East African lived experience.
Michelle Steinmaurer
Board Member
Ian Tay
Board Member
Ian brings over 20 years of expertise in international education to The GIEI Board. Throughout a career spanning multiple continents, he has developed a comprehensive perspective on the global academic lifecycle, serving as a senior examiner, curriculum architect, and dedicated educator.
His academic research focuses extensively on the concept of cosmopolitan nationalism, exploring the intersection of national identity and global responsibility. This scholarly foundation informs his professional practice, where he specializes in designing educational frameworks that meet rigorous international standards while remaining sensitive to local cultural landscapes. Driven by a passion for global citizenship, he focuses on solutions for living sustainably and responsibly in an interconnected global economy, balancing local groundedness with a universal outlook.