Positions

Associate Professor
Institute of International and Comparative Education, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University
Secretary General
World Council of Comparative Education Societies
Assistant Director
Paulo Freire Institute, UCLA
Founding Member
International Network on Gender, Social Justice and Praxis

Bio

Lauren joined the Beijing Normal University faculty in 2013. Before that, her two most recent full-time positions were as a United Kingdom Fulbright Scholar at Roehampton University in London and immediately before that for three years as a national program manager for the US Veterans Administration in Los Angeles. She has been involved with the leadership of the Paulo Freire Institute, UCLA for over ten years. Her research and publications (in English, Spanish, and Portuguese) have focused on a wide range of issues broadly related to social justice and education, detailed below. Lauren is a member of the Teaching in Higher Education Editorial Board. She currently supports a range of work by Chinese community organizations on gender and education issues. She has a long history of work in international service learning with teachers and with other education and health organizations in Nicaragua that began over eleven years ago when she was a fellow for a sustainable development foundation there. She grew up in Virginia (USA) and worked in numerous community organizations there for over 10 years.

Research interests

- Non-formal education and community and social movements (with an emphasis on theology and religion)
- Sociology of higher education
- Critical education
- Globalization and education
- Post-foundational approaches to Global Citizenship Education
- Gender and education
- Rural and urban health education
- Intersections of humanities and the social sciences
- International service learning
- The above research interests within the field of comparative education, particularly post-foundational approaches to the field

Education

- PhD, Social Science and Comparative Education (specialization: Comparative and International Education), UCLA
- MA, Social Science and Comparative Education (specialization: Comparative and International Education), UCLA
- BA, Hispanic Studies; BA, Sociology, College of William & Mary (Virginia, USA)