Editorial Team

Editors-in-Chief

Ann Holt, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Art Education at Penn State University. She also serves as an advisor to ArtsAction Group, an international community-based collective committed to facilitating arts initiatives with children and youth in conflict-affected environments. Her research, teaching and writing encompasses social justice issues involving arts and human development and research on and with archives to broaden understanding about engaging art education archival records. Her art-making encompasses mixed media materials responding to her life experience, research, and teaching. Holt holds a B.F.A. in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute and an M.A. in art education from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. She completed her doctoral work in art education with a minor in women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Penn State University. Her dissertation research explored a feminist transdisciplinary orientation to the Judy Chicago Art Education Collection and broadens understanding about engaging and encountering art education archival records.

Cindy Maguire, PhD, co-directs ArtsAction Group, a community-based collective of arts educators, art therapists, artist teachers, and educators committed to facilitating arts and education initiatives with young people in conflict-affected environments. She is also a professor at Adelphi University. Cindy is a member of the Teachers Without Borders Global Advisory Board and has taught K–12 visual arts education in Los Angeles city schools. Her research interests include STEM to STEAM and the role of collaborative and socially engaged art in personal and social transformation. Maguire received her PhD in Art Education from New York University, MA in Art Education from California State University Long Beach, and her BAE in Art Education from the University of Kansas.
Cindy is also an exhibiting artist and designs and produces socially-engaged art with communities.

Editorial Board

Kim Berman, PhD, is a Professor in Visual Art at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and Executive Director of Artist Proof Studio (APS), a community-based printmaking centre in Newtown, Johannesburg which she co-founded APS with the late Nhlanhla Xaba in 1991. She received her B.F.A. from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1981 and her M.F.A. from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/ Tufts University, USA in 1989. She completed her PhD at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2009. She has lectured and exhibited widely in South Africa and internationally. She is committed to engaging arts for social change through her activism and teaching. Her book: Finding Voice: A visual approach to engaging change is published by the University of Michigan Press. 

Lorrie Blair, PhD, Professor of Art Education, Fellow, School of Irish Studies Concordia University, Quebec, Canada (confirmed) Lorrie Blair is a Professor of Art Education at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. With over 30 years post-secondary teaching experience, she has held positions at universities in the United States and Canada. She is active as a supervisor of MA and Ph.D. thesis students and was a recent recipient of the Faculty of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award. Areas of research include qualitative and studio-based research methods in art education, art-based ethics, thesis writing, teacher identity, teacher training, youth culture, visual culture, popular culture, photography, arts-based learning, body image, qualitative methods, pedagogy, higher education, teachers in popular culture, outsider/folk art, censorship.

Ana Fernandez PhD, is an artist (Miranda Texidor) based in Quito, Ecuador. She serves as a painting faculty at Universidad Central del Ecuador, and Broward College Ecuador, Foothill College, California and CCA California College for the Arts. She holds a PHD in Philosophy, Aesthetics and Art theory with IDSVA. Previously, she received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from California College of the Arts and BFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. In her recent work and research, Ana explores the possibilities of speculative fabulations on Plant Ontology, the Amazonian yachag and the artist in trance. She is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award in 2005, and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant in 2022. She was awarded recently the Ted Coons Dissertation Prize IDSVA 2023. She has received numerous grants, among them, the Artist in Residence at Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale, New York, a grant to develop an Art Program in Yunguilla Ecuador through Center for Art and Public life Oakland California. Her work has been shown throughout Latin America, Spain, Italy, and the US and is in various collections.

Refki Gollopeni, MFA, teaching artist, Fellbach Centre for Creative Education, Kosovo  received his degree from the University of Prishtina where he studied graphic design. He is Culture Coordinator in the Municipality and the Director for Arts Education at the Fellbach-Haus Centre for Creative Education in Theranda-Suhareka, Kosovo. He also directs the International Art Colony, a part of the annual Festari and the Theranda-Suhareka Animation Film Festival (TAFF). His paintings are in numerous private and public collections and his paintings and graphic design work has been the recipient of numerous awards including the National Bank of Kosovo, which recognized his work around the 100th anniversary of the independence of Albania. He also designed the war victims memorial in his municipality as well as designed the emblem of the municipal Assembly of Theranda-Suhareka. A 2018 participant in the Global Institute for the Arts and Leadership, he is recognized as a Global Visionary Leader.

Claire James, MA art therapist, UK holds a master's degree in art psychotherapy from the University of Hertfordshire. She has extensive experience conducting reflective practice sessions for teams and management within a London-based charity, where she facilitates professional reflection to enhance the work of those supporting vulnerable young people and children in supported accommodations and children's homes. Additionally, Claire has worked with young people connected to the youth justice system in the UK, providing them with vital therapeutic support. Claire's expertise extends to delivering art therapy within the UK education system and the NHS. Through her independent art therapy practice, she offers one-on-one therapy for individuals of all ages, addressing a variety of mental health needs, including support for children in foster care. Her commitment to making art therapy accessible to all is evident in the inclusivity of her independent work. As an artist, Claire's abstract creations explore themes of internal and external connections and their mutual influences. Her works convey a visual language that emphasises the importance of self-awareness in fostering collective strength. Central themes in her art include resilience, survival, and the environment.

Rob McCallum PhD, ArtsAction Group Founder and Co-Director,  is an Art and Design Education educator and the Director of Creative Art Start, an after-school and summer arts program for K-8 children and youth. McCallum is also Co-Director of ArtsAction Group and former Art Educator at the Allen-Stevenson School in New York City. Prior to coming the USA, McCallum was Head of the Department of Fine Art and then Dean of the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Johannesburg. As Dean he was involved in the transformation of the institution away from apartheid structures. McCallum received his PhD in Art Education from New York University, MA in Art Education from Ohio State University as a Fulbright Scholar, and BA Art from Cape Town University, South Africa. McCallum is also a practicing artist and has exhibited his work at numerous solo and group shows in South Africa including the Karen McKerron Gallery, Market Theatre Gallery, and the University of Durban-Westville Gallery. His work has been published in the Creative Arts Diary based in Cape Town and is in public collections including the Anglo American Foundation, Market Theatre Foundation, University of Durban-Westville Collection and Provident Fund Corporation in South Africa. His art has been reviewed in numerous publications and television media in South Africa. McCallum also designs and produces community-based collaborative art with children and youth in New York City as well as internationally.

Natalia Pilato PhD, Artist and Art Education Professor Old Dominion University, Virginia, USA is a community-based artist, educator, and scholar who’s work focuses on building the social capital of target communities through artistic processes. Her large scale national and international community-based mural projects have engaged thousands of intergenerational community members in both the design process and the painting of the murals. Natalia Pilato holds a Ph.D. in Art Education from the Pennsylvania State University. She attended her program as a Bunton Waller Graduate Fellow and has received numerous awards of recognition, which include: The Joy of Giving Something Award; Imagining America Scholarship; the Creative Achievement Award from the P.S.U College of Arts and Architecture; the Ingrid P. Holtzman Award; Brian Betzler Memorial Scholarship; Alumni Honors Award; the American Association of University Women Outstanding Achievement Award, and the Business and Professional Women Opportunity Grant. Currently Dr. Pilato lives in Norfolk VA and is an Assistant professor of Art Education and the Director of the Art Education Program at Old Dominion University.

Désirée Rochat PhD, is a community educator and transdisciplinary scholar. Guided by an integrative approach connecting historical research, community archival preservation and education, her work aims to document, theorize and transmit (hi)stories of Black communities’ activism. Rochat develops collaborative projects bridging scholarly and community work. Through this work, she has authored pedagogical material for the community sector on Caribbean communities in Quebec and worked in various initiatives for the preservation and promotion of Black community archives. Her research interests include histories of Black transnational activism; Caribbean diasporic community organizing in Canada; community education and archives; collaborative research methodologies; archival pedagogy and engagement; and the racialization of youth. Rochat is a FRQSC Post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University.

Razia I. Sadik, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Sayed Ahsan Ali and Sayed Maratib Ali School of Education (SOE), Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan. She received her doctorate in Art Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. Her areas of research include critical pedagogy, teacher education, higher education and environmental education, in all of which she investigates how learning happens through and with the arts. Dr. Sadik has over 20 years of experience in program development and instruction in arts higher education, as well as graduate teacher education and professional education programs, in Pakistan and the United States.

Mohamed Sleiman Labat is a visual artist and writer born and raised in the Sahrawi refugee camps in the Hamada desert, southwest Algeria. He is also a photographer and video artist. His art draws upon the past and present life of the Sahrawi people. He has been exploring these interconnected topics through different art practices, through film, writing and community-based art. After graduating from Batna University, Algeria, he returned to Samara Refugee Camp to help support his family and community with the arts and education he received. In 2016, he built Motif Art Studio in Samara Camp, an art space built entirely from discarded materials; the studio now is a creative hub for art creation and art education in the camp. The studio also includes an experimental garden to grow vegetables and plants as part of the studio practice. The garden provides some food for the family as well as an escape from the harsh desert hot environment. Sleiman Labat’s art aims to address pressing social, political and environmental issues whose impact is touching his local community and the world at large. Following a three-year artistic research project in Finland, a project investigating Phosphate and its impact on two different environments, the desert and the Baltic Sea. He is invited by the curators of the Helsinki Art Museum to exhibit in the Helsinki Biennial 2023; He’s been commissioned to create an art installation of a Sandoponic Garden based on the garden model that is currently being developed in the desert. The garden practices and the knowledge developing with them in the specific context of the Saharawi are strong expressions that Sleiman Labat is using to process and address issues of climate change, environmental justice and community resilience.

Janine Simpson, MA, art therapist, Isle of Man, UK holds a degree in Art Psychotherapy from the University of Hertfordshire. Janine has 10 years’ experience working with Looked After Children in a London based charity specialising in residential care and therapeutic engagement. In her consultancy role, Janine uses art therapy theory and practice to facilitate art-based reflective practice sessions for children’s workers and home managers. Passionate about mental health and wellbeing Janine has two years’ experience as a neophyte art therapist in NHS adult community mental health services and later NHS forensic services. As a director of her own art therapy business and winner of the Santander ‘Flare’ Business Awards for ‘Best Business Idea’ Janine brings creative business acumen to the global ArtAction Group. As Director of ArtsAction Group UK Janine believes in ‘wellbeing for all’ and promotes a collaborative, side by side approach when working with individuals, communities and organizations on a local and global scale. In her spare time these themes continue in her work as an abstract expressionist artist where intersubjective theories are explored visually in a painted series named ‘The Space Between’.