New UNESCO Chair in Storytelling Education for Sustainability
We are delighted to announce that Professor Mike Wilson has been appointed to a prestigious UNESCO Chair in Storytelling Education for Sustainability. He will be joining Richard Guilianotti and Qiuhua Laing as Loughborough’s third UNESCO Chair.
Mike will also be joining a network of around 1000 UNESCO Chairs globally, senior professors who propose and carry out programmes of international projects that seek to address the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, as well as providing a pool of expertise to advise on UNESCO’s strategy and global policy development.
Mike’s proposed programme of projects will focus on environmental and health sustainability in Africa, India and the Arctic Nations and over the coming years will be creating projects with a wide range of international partners in India, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Sweden and beyond.
In these endeavours, Mike will also lead a team of Loughborough colleagues, supported by Catherine Rees and Rob Harland from the Storytelling Academy, along with Fred Dalmasso, Karen Sung and other academics from across the University.
This the first time that UNESCO has appointed a Chair in Storytelling and is a unique opportunity to give Applied Storytelling visibility on the international stage and to ensure maximum impact for our research in the Storytelling Academy. It is, in part, recognition of the fact that storytelling is now seen as an important tool in engaging the public in debates around some of the greatest challenges facing the world in the twenty-first century. It will also give us the opportunity to train large numbers of new storytellers to carry out important sustainability work in our partner countries and beyond. Mike will also act as a powerful advocate and voice for Storytelling for Sustainability globally.
On July 2nd the University will be hosting a UNESCO Day to celebrate Loughborough’s engagement with UNESCO and launch the new Chair in Storytelling Education for Sustainability. For the event we will also be joined by Ms Ananya Bhattacharya from Contact Base, a NGO based in Kolkata, India, and one of our key partners on the programme. Ananya will be with us all week as a Visiting International Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies.
Please follow this link to the official press release from Loughborough University: UNESCO’s first-ever Chair in Storytelling | Media Centre | Loughborough University
You can also find out more about the UNESCO Chair HERE!
