UIL Honorary Fellows 2016
UIL recognizes individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to the fields of lifelong learning, adult and continuing education, literacy and non-formal basic education.
Maria Lourdes ALMAZAN KHAN
Maria Khan has been Secretary General of the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education (ASPBAE) since 1995. During that time, she has helped ASPBAE become the most important adult education and civil society network in the Asia Pacific region – recognized regionally and internationally for its promotion of education and of adult education, in particular.
She also served as Asia Pacific focal point in the coordination group of the UNESCO Collective Consultation of NGOs on Education for All (EFA) from July 2001 to 2008 and from February 2012 to date. Ms Khan has represented the civil society sector on several international policy bodies/platforms on education, including the High-level Group on EFA, the Editorial/Advisory Board of the Global Monitoring Report on EFA, the UN Literacy Decade Experts Group, the CONFINTEA VI Consultative Committee and the EFA Steering Committee. She is one of the three incumbent civil society representatives in the SDG-Education 2030 Steering Committee and serves as one of its vice-chairs.
Heribert HINZEN
Heribert Hinzen studied in Bonn and Cologne, Germany, and obtained his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg for a comparative study of adult education in Tanzania. His first UNESCO conference was in 1975, on Structures of Adult Education in Africa, and in 1976 he coordinated a study on Tanzanian education reform. He joined the German Adult Education Association, DVV International, in 1977, working there in different roles, including as director of headquarters, and, for a couple of years each, managing the offices in Sierra Leone, Hungary and Laos (the Regional Office for South and Southeast Asia), until 2015.
He now works as a consultant and teaches international adult education and lifelong learning at the universities of Cologne, Hannover and Würzburg. He has been a member of the UN Literacy Decade Expert Group, the international advisory board of UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report, and the CONFINTEA VI consultative group. In 2000 and 2015 he was part of the German delegation to the World Education Forum.
Leona ENGLISH
Leona M. English is Professor of Adult Education at St. Francis Xavier University, Canada. She holds a B.A., a B.Ed. (Memorial University), an M.R.E. (University of Toronto), an Ed.D. (Columbia University, NY) and a Ph.D. (University of Technology, Australia). Her current research interests include a funded project entitled ‘Women’s Writing in Adult Education: Building on Gender and History’, which focuses on women members of the Canadian Association for Astrological Education between 1940 and 1960.
She is co-editor of Adult Education Quarterly and past-president of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education. Her publications include the International Encyclopedia of Adult Education, Feminism in Community and Adult Education and Health. Her book, Learning with Adults: A Critical Pedagogical Introduction, co-written with Peter Mayo, won the Houle Award for Outstanding Literature in Adult Education by the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education.
Raafat RADWAN
Raafat Radwan, who has a Ph.D. in management from Claremont Graduate School (School of Peter Drucker), led Egypt’s transformation into the information age. He is co-founder of the Information and Decision Support Centre for the cabinet of ministers, and acted as executive director and chairman for 20 years. During this period, more than 1,300 information centres were built around the country and more than 400,000 adults were trained in the field of ICT. Mr Radwan was awarded the First Order Medal of Science and Arts in 2004.
Mr Radwan was selected to manage and direct Egypt’s Adult Education Authority where he developed the national plan that improved the literacy rate by 12 per cent in five years. During this period, he won the Confucius Prize in 2010 for the unique ‘Females for Families’ programme. Mr Radwan is a jury member of UNESCO literacy prizes and a regional consultant in adult education and learning.
Kjell RUBENSON
Kjell Rubenson held Sweden’s first chair in adult education before moving to Canada where he served as a professor of education at the University of British Columbia and as co-director of the Centre for Policy Studies in Higher Education and Training. Moreover, he is the founding president of the European Society for the Study of Education of Adults and has conducted research and consultancy for a variety of national and international bodies, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
He has also undertaken work for the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, where he was a member of the editorial board for the Third Global Report on Adult Learning and Education (GRALE III), and the European Commission, where he was a member of the scientific advisory board of the education information network, EURYDICE.
Alan TUCKETT
Alan Tuckett is Professor of Education at the University of Wolverhampton. He has led adult education institutes in Brighton and London, and, from 1988 to 2011, was CEO and Director of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education in the UK.
From 2011 to 2015 he was President of the International Council for Adult Education, leading its advocacy work on the development of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In the UK in the 1970s he helped start the national adult literacy campaign, and in 1992 he started Adult Learners’ Week – subsequently adopted by UNESCO and spread to 55 countries. For more than 20 years he advised ministers in England, and has advised the governments of Australia, Singapore and South Africa, and the Palestine National Authority, as well as UNESCO, and has taught at universities in the UK, Germany and Australia.
Shirley WALTERS
Shirley Walters has been Professor of Adult and Continuing Education and a scholar-activist at the University of Western Cape, South Africa, since 1985. She is the founding director of the Centre for Adult and Continuing Education and the Division for Lifelong Learning.
Since July 2014, she has been Professor Emerita and is co-director of the Traditions of Popular Education research project, supported by the Institute for Humanities and Social Science (IHSS). She has served on various national committees, including as chair of South African Qualifications Authority, from 2004 to 2010, chair of the Learning Cape, and is currently on the Transformation Oversight Committee for Public Higher Education. Awards include an honorary doctorate from the University of Linkoping (2001) and induction into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame in 2004. Together with Professor Astrid von Kotze, she received the inaugural IHSS Award for innovative use of social media in research in 2016. She is deputy president (Africa) of the International Council for Adult Education and has been active within social justice oriented civil society organizations for over 30 years, both locally and globally.
