Roger Säljö
Professor, University of Gothenberg

Bio and Research Interest

Roger Säljö is a professor at the University of Gothenberg (Sweden).  Since 2006 he has served as the Director of the Linnaeus Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Communication in Contemporary Society (LinCS), a national center of excellence funded by the Swedish Research Council. In recent years, he has worked extensively with issues that concern how the so-called new technologies transform human learning practices inside and outside formal schooling. In this field, he has been responsible for the national research program, LearnIT, funded by the Knowledge Foundation.  He is is one of the founding editors of the journal Learning, Culture and Social Interaction. 

Samuel Greiff

Bio and Research Interests

Prof. Dr. Samuel Greiff holds the position of Professor of Educational Monitoring & Effectiveness at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) since October 2024. At TUM, he leads the Centre for International Student Assessment (ZIB) and oversees the national implementation of the PISA study. Before joining TUM, he headed the “Educational Psychology & Artificial Intelligence” research unit at Goethe-University Frankfurt from March to September 2024. He also led the “Cognition, Learning, & Educational Assessment” research group at the University of Luxembourg from 2012 to 2024.

Prof. Greiff's research focuses on systemic educational issues and monitoring through international large-scale comparative studies. His approach to education is holistic, incorporating both individual and societal perspectives. He is particularly interested in leveraging artificial intelligence and process data in educational studies, as well as in embedding 21st-century skills into educational practices. These approaches offer new opportunities to better understand learning processes and learning outcomes.

For many years, Prof. Greiff and his team have contributed to international comparative education studies, such as PISA and PIAAC. Their work offers valuable insights for systemic educational development and informs education policy. Prof. Greiff’s expertise supports evidence-based decision-making for educational reforms that enhance equality of opportunity, as well as the effectiveness and efficiency of education.

In addition, Prof. Greiff has substantial experience in securing third-party funding and frequently publishes in leading journals, including Nature, Computers & Education, and the Journal of Educational Psychology. He is also active as an editor for journals such as Learning and Individual Differences and the Journal of Educational Psychology.

Servaas van der Berg
Professor (National Research Foundation Chair in Social Policy) at Stellenbosch University (South Africa)

Bio and Research Interest

He joined the Department of Economics at University of Stellenbosch in 1982, currently holding the rank of Professor of Economics. He teaches courses in Poverty and Distribution, Development Economics, and Economics of Education.  During his career he has served as a consultant for numerous national and international organizations and agencies, including the World Bank, UNICEF, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Development Bank of Southern Africa, the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), and the Institute for Policy Analysis (AIPA).  He also has worked collaboratively on a number of economic and educational projects.  His most recent project is called “Binding Constraints in Education,” and is a multi-part study financed by the Project to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development, a partnership project between the South African Presidency and the European Union. This multifaceted project is investigating all facets of the school education system to assist in identifying the major constraints to improved learning in schools.  His research interests include economic development, poverty, income distribution, and social policy.

Stella Vosniadou
Strategic Professor 

Bio and Research Interest

Stella Vosniadou is currently a Strategic Professor at Flinders University in South Australia and an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Philosophy and History of Science at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her research interests are in the areas of learning, cognitive development and conceptual change in the learning of science and mathematics. She has more than 150 publications including authored and edited books, articles in refereed journal and edited volumes and over 14,000 citations. She is well known internationally for her research for which she received the 2011 Distinguished International Contributions to Child Development Award by the Society for Research in Child Development.

Sylvia Schmelkes

Bio and Research Interest

Sylvia Schmelkes is a Mexican sociologist and education researcher who currently is serving as the director of the Mexican National Institute of Educational Evaluation (INEE).  She studied sociology at the Ibero-American University in Mexico City and obtained a Master's degree in Education Research by the same institution.  She is best known for her work in intercultural education and her book Toward Better Quality of our Schools. She has written more than 100 academic texts and essays. She is a former General Coordinator of Intercultural and Bilingual Education at the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico.  In 2008 she received the Comenius Medal from UNESCO for her career as a researcher. Other awards include Ibero-American University’s Tlamatini award in 2003 and the Maria Lavalle Urbina award in 1998.  Her research interests include intercultural bilingual education, values, education and adult learning.  

Tina Seidel

Friedl Schöller Endowed Chair of Teaching and Learning Research
Technische Universität München

Bio and Research Interest

After studying psychology at the University of Regensburg and Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee), Professor Seidel was awarded a doctorate at the Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN) in Kiel in 2002. She was appointed to the position of junior professor of teaching research in 2003. Prior to assuming the position of professor at TUM, she was a visiting professor at Stanford University (2005-2006) and held the Chair of Educational Psychology at the University of Jena (2007-2009). Professor Seidel is a member of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction and the American Educational Research Association. She has been a member of the Research Committee of the German University Rectors’ Conference since 2009.

Ulrich Teichler
Professor, International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER-Kassel),
University of Kassel (Germany) from 1978 to 2013

Bio and Research Interest

Ulrich Teichler was for 35 years professor on higher education at the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER Kassel) and at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Kassel (Germany), and he was about half the period Director of the Centre. Already as a student (at the Free University of Berlin), he became member (from 1965 to 1978) member of the Max Planck Institute for Educational Research in Berlin, when he also submitted his doctoral dissertation to the University of Bremen. His research activities and publications focused on higher education and the world of work, systems of higher education in comparative perspective, international mobility and cooperation in higher education, the academic profession as well as the situation of higher education research. He analyzed the search of higher education to strike a balance between accepting societal expectations and playing a proactive, “unexpected” role for society. For example, he emphasized that logics of national higher education systems varied more substantially that widespread assumptions on global trends suggest, he undertook many research projects funded by “political” and governmental agencies. He spent extended periods of research in Japan, the U.S. and the Netherlands, he was guest lecturer or visiting professor in ten countries, and his academic activities brought him to more than 80 countries. More than 500 publications each were written by him in German and in English, and more than 200 articles were published into 20 other languages. He was the founder in 1988 of the internationally most active association of researchers in his area of expertise, i.e. the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER).

William H. Schubert
Professor Emeritus of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Illinois at Chicago

Research Interest

William H. Schubert retired in 2011 from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) where he was a faculty member since 1975. Before his university work he was an elementary school teacher in Downers Grove, Illinois from 1967-1975. Schubert received his Bachelor’s Degree from Manchester College, a Master of Science in Philosophy of Education from Indiana University, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his 36 years at UIC, he held positions of Chair of the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, Director of Graduate Studies, Coordinator of the Ph.D. Program in Curriculum Studies, Coordinator of the M.Ed. in Educational Studies, among others. At UIC, Schubert received the College of Education Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award, the University Excellence in Teaching Award, the University Graduate Mentoring Award, and the Alumni Association Teaching Excellence Award. He has published 17 books, 200 articles and chapters, several poems, has made over 250 presentations at scholarly and professional organizations, chaired over 60 Ph.D. dissertations and served on committees for over 100 others. In 2005, he was designated as a University Scholar at UIC. Schubert’s primary scholarly interests are curriculum history, theory, inquiry, and development in both school and non-school contexts. In this work he developed ideas such as the synoptic curriculum text, the speculative essay, curriculum genealogies, teacher lore, and fictionalized autobiographies in curriculum studies. During the past decade he has focused especially on education that has emerged in resistance to forces of conquest and colonialism (past and present) in the United States and in diverse countries and cultures. Additionally, based on his interest in teacher lore and in the biographical and autobiographical work of professors of education, he is also writing stories of educational experience as a window to theory and praxis.

Dr. Wolfgang Schneider
Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg

Bio and Research Interest

Wolfgang Schneider is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Germany. He received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Heidelberg in 1979. His research interests include the development of memory and metacognition, giftedness and expertise, the development of reading and spelling, as well as the prevention of reading and math difficulties. He was Vice-president and President of the German Psychological Society (2000-2004), and also Vice-president of the University of Würzburg (2004-2009). He is author and (co-) editor of about 50 books, including a volume on “Memory Development from Early Childhood through Emerging Adulthood” (2015), and (co-)authored more than 500 journal articles and book chapters.  Schneider was President of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development (ISSBD) from 2010 to 2012. He is a member of the Leopoldina (German Academy of Natural Sciences).  

Yael Kali

Bio and Research Interests

Professor Yael Kali is Head of the Educational Technologies Program at the School of Learning Sciences and Educational Leadership at the University of Haifa, where she leads research on learning, pedagogical design, and educational innovation. She is a Fellow of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) since 2024. Her work focuses on large-scale school–university partnerships that foster mutual learning among students, teachers, education researchers, and scientists.

Over the years, Professor Kali has led major competitive research grants and established national research centers, including the Learning in a Networked Society (LINKS) Israeli Center of Research Excellence (I-CORE, 2013–2019) and the Taking Citizen Science to School (TCSS Center, since 2018). In 2023, TCSS was recognized in the Community Engagement Initiative of the Year category for the Asia-Pacific region by the Triple E Awards.