Current Research Ideas
Cultivating the Geographical Imagination: The Village of 100 as a Participatory Pedagogy for Global Citizenship Education
This practice-based research project reimagines The World as a Village of 100 People—a classic global education simulation—as a participatory pedagogy for cultivating students’ geographical imagination and global citizenship. By combining storytelling, mapping, and data visualization, The Village of 100 invites learners to see themselves as part of an interconnected planet, transforming abstract global statistics into lived, empathetic understanding. The project partners with teachers and communities to co-design, enact, and document classroom and public iterations of the simulation, exploring how participatory and narrative methods can foster critical reflection on inequality, interdependence, and planetary futures. Drawing on geography education, critical pedagogy, and Global Citizenship Education (GCED), this work advances a creative, place-conscious approach to global learning that links local experience to global awareness.
Mapping the World in the Advanced Placement Curriculum: Geographical Imaginations Across Courses
This project explores how school curricula teach students to imagine the world. Through a comparative analysis of eight Advanced Placement (AP) courses—including Geography, History, Environmental Science, Economics, and Art History—it maps the “geographical imaginations” that shape young people’s sense of place, power, and global interconnection. The study combines critical curriculum analysis with participatory, practice-based research involving teachers and students to design integrative learning modules that bridge disciplinary silos (e.g., linking markets to planetary systems, or migration to identity). By revealing how curriculum frames global citizenship and by prototyping new tools for coherence and justice-oriented global competence, the project aims to inform both geography education and broader efforts in Global Citizenship Education (GCED).
Mapping Global Citizenship Education as a Complex System: A Systems and Complexity Approach
This research project applies systems thinking and complexity theory to Global Citizenship Education (GCED), seeking to map how ideas, actors, and practices interconnect across scales—from classrooms to international policy frameworks. By visualizing GCED as a living system rather than a fixed curriculum, the project explores how initiatives evolve, adapt, and sometimes conflict within dynamic educational, cultural, and ecological contexts. Using participatory mapping, network analysis, and narrative inquiry, the study brings together educators, researchers, and learners to co-create a systems map that reveals leverage points for transformative change. The goal is to move beyond linear models of global education toward a regenerative, relational understanding of how global citizenship emerges through complex interactions of place, policy, and practice.