Steering Committee

CIRCE’s administrative structure involves a Steering Committee, an international Board of Advisors, and an Academic Council.

The Steering Committee

Mark Fettes is an Associate Professor in the SFU Faculty of Education. Beginning with work on the revitalization of indigenous languages, his academic work has focused on understanding the role of imagination in learning, teaching, and schooling. As SFU he has worked with teachers at all levels of the formal education system, with a focus on helping them find more imaginative and engaging ways of teaching the mainstream curriculum. He has also been involved in several community-based research projects focused on school district-First Nation partnerships and decolonizing place-based education. The theoretical side of his work explores the relationships between experience, language, imagination and community.

Kieran Egan is an emeritus professor of the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. His interests have included trying to sketch a somewhat new educational theory, and also working out ways to help students and teachers to implement it in everyday classrooms. He graduated from London University with a B.A. in History, and from Cornell University with a PhD in Education. He is now retired and writes poetry or makes pottery; one of those anyway.

Laurie Anderson is the Executive Director of SFU Vancouver, an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Education, and a Senior Associate with SFU’s Centre for Dialogue. Laurie has 30 years of experience in the K-12 system in Vancouver and Coquitlam, serving in every educational role from teacher to superintendent. Laurie has held various consultancy positions, including on program reform strategies for the BC Ministry of Education, assessment and evaluation frameworks for the Education Bureau of Hong Kong, and leadership development programs in China, Thailand and Cambodia. Laurie obtained his BEd, MA and PhD at SFU.

Sean Blenkinsop is a professor of education at SFU. Trained as a philosopher of education at Harvard, he has published widely in the fields of outdoor, environmental, and ecological education. Recent work has focused on creating, supporting and researching two unique K-7 outdoor/environmental public schools which focus on changing the culture of education to one that seeks to build relationships with the natural world, understands local places and its inhabitants to be co-teachers, and recognizes the outdoors as a significant place of learning. None of which can be done without the imagination and a good sense of humour. His latest book Wild Pedagogies was just published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

Chloë Falez is an undergraduate student studying in the English Department at Simon Fraser University. She aspires to be an elementary school teacher and is grateful to all the wonderful teachers who instilled the love and passion for education she has today.