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Education in Small States Research Group (ESSRG) News and Website Relaunch

20 April 2021

The ESSRG research group is part of the School of Education’s Centre for Comparative and International Research in Education (CIRE). As an established research group since 1994, our work has focused on issues relating to the quality of education, sustainable development, environmental uncertainty and research capacity in small states. Specific attention has been given to the challenges faced by small island developing states (SIDS), to their priorities and achievements and, most significantly, to what the international community can learn from their distinctive experience.

The UN identifies 58 SIDS and territories worldwide and has recognized them as a distinct group since the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2014 our UN Accredited SIDS Partnership 'Learning from the Sharp End of Environmental Uncertainty in SIDS', was launched at the UN Conference on Small Island Developing States, Apia, Samoa. This initiative was developed in collaboration with the Cabot Institute for the Environment (see http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cabot/what-we-do/more-case-studies/2014/57.html).

It is 27 years since the ESSRG was founded by Professor Michael Crossley and Dame Pearlette Louisy. Pearlette was at that time a PhD student in the SoE and she is now one of our most distinguished Alumni having served as Governor General and Head of State for St Lucia from 1997 – 2018. We are now pleased to announce the further decentralisation of our ESSRG leadership with former doctoral researchers Aminath Shiyama (Shimmi) and Aminath Muna joining the team as Joint Research Associates and Coordinators with a base in the Maldives, supported by Michael and Terra in Bristol.

This core team has also been working hard to reshape and update our ESSRG website so we are pleased to formally re-launch that here: www.smallstates.net

Please, therefore, have a look at the new items including a significant section on Education in the Maldives, an influential video of an underwater Cabinet Meeting, revised Publications and Dissertation Abstracts lists, additions to the Sharp End Partnership page and recent News Bulletin entries.

In December 2020 a group of ESSRG members based in the Maldives made a detailed presentation at the OCIES (Oceania Comparative and International Education Society) On-Line Festival. This reported their research on the impact and response to Covid-19 on education in the Maldives and a video recording of this is now also available on the website.

We welcome further collaborative initiatives with our membership that now numbers around 100 people worldwide, including partners in the three main groupings of SIDS in Oceania, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean … and beyond.

We also encourage SoE members to join with us in identifying ways in which the ESSRG may do more to contribute to postgraduate, doctoral and postdoctoral teaching, research and mentorship within the School of Education, and to the University of Bristol’s sustainability and climate change initiatives.

Of course, we continue to emphasise that the underlying rationale and values of the ESSRG are consistent with those first articulated when the Group was founded 27 years ago: expressing our concerns to learn from and share the distinctive experiences, perspectives, values and epistemologies relating to education, research and sustainable development in small states.

Finally, we are currently in the process of developing a series of events for 2021 with a planned Bristol Conversations in Education session by Dr Holly Henderson (University of Nottingham) for the 26th May on the topic ‘All islands have a boundary’: Experiences of higher education on small islands in and around the UK. Other webinar proposals are in the pipeline including a possible special Round Table event related to COP 26 in October or November.

 

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