Whereas along the first year of the GLOBED programme students usually live in the same city and study the same courses at the same university, the second year is more focused on individual research and analysis. That is why one of the greatest moments of the second year of the programme is the Winter School. This one-week event is a reunion of the students in between the internship and the fieldwork period and the beginning of the thesis writing process.
The students of the fourth cohort (2019 – 2021), together with the Globed staff, professors, and invited international scholars, should have met in Cyprus from 20 to 27 February 2021, in concrete in the city of Nicosia, where the University of Cyprus is located. Nevertheless, for obvious reasons and for the first time in the programme’s history, the Winter School had to be performed online.
Despite limitations, the Winter School was able to take place, and this year was focused on Inclusion in Education and Society. The upside was that everyone was able to attend the event -whatever the current location or the economic situation.
The Online Winter School was opened by Ines Alves, today Lecturer in Inclusive Education and Programme Leader for the MEd in Inclusive Education at the University of Glasgow. Currently located in Portugal, she gave the presentation on Inclusive education: from policy to practice?, chaired by Oscar Valiente.
On Tuesday, it was the turn for Federico R. Waitoller to present his study on Excluded by Choice: Students with disabilities in the education marketplace, carrying everybody away towards the streets of Chicago. Waitoller is an associate professor at the department of special education at the University of Illinois, although currently based in the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Wednesday was time to welcome Manos Antoninis and his motto All means all: Preparing the Global Education Monitoring Report on inclusion. Antoninis is the Director of the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report since August 2017.
Anastasia Vlachou, the invited speaker for Thursday 25 February, could finally attend the lecture in spite of the demonstrations taking place at the University of Thessaly, where she belongs. Her commitment to global development and education was reason enough for the young protesters to let her in. The lecture she prepared for the Winter School was entitled Inclusive education policies: Fundamental perspectives, specificities and future directions.
Last but not least, the professor Roger Slee was in charge of closing the Winter School on Friday at noon (CET), when it was 10:00 pm in Victoria, Australia, where he lives now. Chaired by his friend Helen Phtiaka, Slee made everybody reflect with his lecture Executing Inclusion.
Apart from all morning lectures, the afternoons were devoted to different workshops. The professor Gita Steiner-Khamsi coordinated two sessions, on Monday and on Wednesday, about academic writing. On Tuesday and Thursday, GLOBED 4 Students presented their dissertations in groups, receiving feedback from academics and peers. And, finally, a career workshop was organised on Friday, in which four alumni from previous cohorts –Jennifer Ulrick, Leo Boe, Laura Mentini and Elizabeth Ascroft- provided with their professional experience after the master’s degree.