Programme

Thursday, November 5 to Sunday, November 8 will be held at TBS Education Barcelona.
Monday, November 9 will be held online.
All times are Central European Time (UTC+1)

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Conference Outline

*Please be aware that the above schedule may be subject to change.

Thu, November 5, 2026Fri, November 6, 2026Sat, November 7, 2026Sun, November 8, 2026Mon, November 9, 2026

Conference Venue: TBS Education Barcelona

13:00: Conference Check-in | Attic (7F)

13:15-13:55: Conference Orientation for First-Time Presenters | Conference Room (7F)
Matthew Chima, IAFOR, Japan
Melina Neophytou, IAFOR, Japan

This session provides an overview of what to expect at the conference, including guidance on preparing your presentation, publishing opportunities, and ways to engage with IAFOR.

14:00-14:45: Flash Presentations | Conference Room (7F)
This session allows presenters to maximise their visibility and showcase their research in this fast-paced, informal networking session. Each presenter has 60 seconds to highlight the key ideas, findings, or areas of interest in their work in lightning rounds, providing an opportunity for all participants to discover other presenters’ work and find sessions they may wish to attend during the conference. This session is open to all delegates, including those who have already presented. Audience members are welcome to watch the presentations.

- further details

14:45-15:15: Networking Coffee Break | Attic (7F)

15:15-17:00: Featured Workshop Session | Conference Room (7F)

    15:15-16:05: Featured Workshop 1
    Design Education in an Accelerated World: How Are We Keeping Up?
    Heitor Alvelos, University of Porto, Portugal
    Susana Barreto, University of Porto, Portugal

    16:10-17:00: Featured Workshop 2
    Senior Academic Leadership
    Anne Boddington, IAFOR & Kingston University, United Kingdom
    Donald E. Hall, Binghamton University, United States
    Joseph Haldane, IAFOR & The University of Osaka, Japan (Moderator)

17:00-18:00: Welcome Reception | Attic (7F)
Admission is included in the conference registration fee and is only open to registered onsite conference delegates.

Conference Venue: TBS Education Barcelona

09:00: Conference Check-in & Coffee | Attic (7F)

09:30-10:00: Welcome Address & Recognition of IAFOR Scholarship Winners | Auditorium (7F) & Online
Joseph Haldane, IAFOR & The University of Osaka, Japan

10:05-10:30: Keynote Presentation | Auditorium (7F) & Online
Interdisciplinarity, Creativity, and Learning in a World of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
Anne Boddington, IAFOR & Kingston University, United Kingdom
10:30-10:45: Q&A

10:50-11:50: Panel Presentation | Auditorium (7F) & Online
Educating for Hope: Creativity, Culture, and Social Change
Brian Aycock, Chuo University, Japan
Anne Boddington, IAFOR & Kingston University, United Kingdom
Alex Seago, Richmond American University London, United Kingdom
Joseph Haldane, IAFOR & The University of Osaka, Japan (Moderator)

11:55-12:55: The Forum (Onsite) | Auditorium (7F)
Agency in Times of Crisis
Donald E. Hall, Binghamton University, United States (Respondent)
Melina Neophytou, IAFOR, Japan (Moderator)

The Forum is a plenary session designed as a platform for international, intercultural, interdisciplinary – and inclusive – discussions, joining experts and practitioners in an open dialogue format. Come share your thoughts and experiences as global educators and researchers.

12:55-13:00: Conference Photograph

13:00-14:15: Extended Break

14:15-15:00: Featured Session | Auditorium (7F)
The Unknown Soldier: A Play in Performance
Gloria Montero, Playwright and Poet, Spain

15:05-16:05: Cultural Presentation | Auditorium (7F)
A Journey Through the History of the Catalan Rumba
Joan Delgado, The Raval's Band, Spain
Agustín Gálvez, The Raval's Band, Spain

16:10-17:10: Conference Poster Session & Networking Coffee | Attic (7F)

20:00: Conference Dinner | Racó de la Vila
This is a ticketed event

Conference Venue: TBS Education Barcelona

09:00: Conference Check-in & Coffee | Ground Floor

09:30-11:10: Onsite Parallel Session 1
Room 202 (2F): BCE | Interdisciplinary Education
Room 203 (2F): BCE/BAMC | Educational Research and Curriculum Design
Room 204 (2F): BCE | AI-Mediated Education
Room 205 (2F): BAMC | Literature, Literary Studies and Theory
Room 208 (2F): BCE | Teacher's Professional Development Experiences
Room 209 (2F): BCE | Mind, Brain and Psychology in Educational Contexts

11:10-11:25: Break

11:25-13:05: Onsite Parallel Session 2
Room 202 (2F): BCE/BAMC | Sustainable Development Issues in Education
Room 203 (2F): BCE | Curriculum Design and Development
Room 204 (2F): BCE | Pedagogy and Praxis
Room 205 (2F): BCE/BAMC | Linguistics, Language and Culture
Room 208 (2F): BCE | Professional Development and AI
Room 209 (2F): BCE | Student Learning and Learner Diversity

13:05-13:35: Networking Coffee Break | Agora (1F)

13:05-13:55: Chatterbox: Guided Networking Session | Agora (2F)
Matthew Chima, IAFOR, Japan

Some of the most useful conversations can happen outside the formal presentation rooms. Chatterbox guides participants through engaging in conversations in an easy and more informal way to meet people onsite, beyond the presentations. Participants will choose from a selection of themed networking groups, each offering a different starting point for conversation.

- further details

14:00-15:15: Onsite Parallel Session 3
Room 202 (2F): BCE/BAMC | Sustainability and Society
Room 203 (2F): BCE | Cryptography in the Classroom (Workshop)
Room 204 (2F): BCE | Teaching Voice in the Era of Generative Text (Workshop)
Room 205 (2F): BAMC | Media Studies
Room 208 (2F): BCE | ReflAct: Shaping the Future of Education with a Systemic Constructivist Stance (Workshop)
Room 209 (2F): BCE | Guidance and Learning Experiences

15:15-15:30: Break

15:30-17:10: Onsite Parallel Session 4
Room 202 (2F): BCE | Education, Sustainability and Society
Room 203 (2F): BCE/BAMC | Technology in Curriculum Design and Development
Room 204 (2F): BCE | Educational Assessment and AI
Room 205 (2F): BAMC | Sociology
Room 208 (2F): BCE | Professional Training, Development and Concerns in Education
Room 209 (2F): BCE | Education and Differences

Conference Venue: TBS Education Barcelona

09:00: Conference Check-in | Ground Floor

09:30-11:10: Onsite Parallel Session 1
Room 202 (2F): BCE | Assessment Theories and Methodologies
Room 203 (2F): BCE | Language Teaching Experiences
Room 204 (2F): BCE | Educational Policy and Leadership
Room 205 (2F): BAMC | Arts Practices
Room 208 (2F): BCE | Teaching Experiences and Pedagogical Development

11:10-11:25: Coffee Break

11:25-13:05: Onsite Parallel Session 2
Room 202 (2F): BCE | AI and Assessment in Education
Room 203 (2F): BCE | Foreign Languages Education and Applied Linguistics (including ESL/TESL/TEFL)
Room 204 (2F): BCE | Educational Policy, Management and Administration
Room 205 (2F): BAMC | Digital Humanities
Room 208 (2F): BCE | Professional Training and Development in Education

13:05-13:25: Onsite Closing Session

13:25-14:45: Extended Break

14:45-16:35: Knowledge Exchange Hubs | Agora (2F)
Connect, collaborate, and shape ideas in this interactive session designed to turn delegates from passive participants into active contributors. Join rotating topic groups, exchange ideas on topics selected by delegates, explore potential interdisciplinary collaborations, and experiment with AI-based tools to develop and share your ideas. Coffee will be served throughout the session.

    14:45-14:55: Opening and Group Formation
    14:55-15:25: Group Discussion
    15:25-15:55: Creative Reflection & Storytelling (with optional AI support)
    15:55-16:25: Group Presentations
    16:25-16:35: Wrap-Up

- further details

Conference Venue: Online via Zoom

09:00-09:05: Message from IAFOR

09:05-10:05: The Forum (Online) | Live-Stream Room 2
Agency in Times of Crisis
Briar Pelletier, IAFOR, Japan (Online Moderator)

The Forum is a plenary session designed as a platform for international, intercultural, interdisciplinary – and inclusive – discussions, joining experts and practitioners in an open dialogue format. Come share your thoughts and experiences as global educators and researchers.

10:05-10:20: Break

10:20-12:00: Online Parallel Session 1
Live-Stream Room 2: BAMC | Linguistics and Language (Workshop and Presentation)
Live-Stream Room 3: BCE | Education Policy, Leadership and Management
Live-Stream Room 4: BCE | Teaching and Learning Experiences

12:00-12:10: Break

12:10-13:50: Online Parallel Session 2
Live-Stream Room 2: BCE | Curriculum Design and Development
Live-Stream Room 3: BCE/BAMC | Professional Training, Development and Concerns in Education
Live-Stream Room 4: BAMC | Arts, Media and Culture

13:50-14:00: Break

14:00-15:40: Online Parallel Session 3
Live-Stream Room 2: BCE/BAMC | Education/Pedagogy
Live-Stream Room 3: BCE | Teaching Experiences, Pedagogy, Practice and Praxis
Live-Stream Room 4: BCE/BAMC | Digital Humanities

15:40-15:45: Message from IAFOR

*Please be aware that the above schedule may be subject to change.

Featured Speakers

  • Heitor Alvelos
    Heitor Alvelos
    University of Porto, Portugal
  • Brian Aycock
    Brian Aycock
    Chuo University, Japan
  • Susana Barreto
    Susana Barreto
    University of Porto, Portugal
  • Anne Boddington
    Anne Boddington
    IAFOR, Japan
  • Donald E. Hall
    Donald E. Hall
    Binghamton University, United States
  • Gloria Montero
    Gloria Montero
    Novelist; Dramatist; Poet, Spain
  • Alex Seago
    Alex Seago
    Richmond American University London, United Kingdom

Featured Presentations

  • Interdisciplinarity, Creativity and Learning in a World of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
    Interdisciplinarity, Creativity and Learning in a World of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
    Keynote Presentation: Anne Boddington
  • Educating for Hope: Creativity, Culture, and Social Change
    Educating for Hope: Creativity, Culture, and Social Change
    Panel Presentation: Brian Aycock, Anne Boddington, Alex Seago, Joseph Haldane
  • The Unknown Soldier: A Play in Performance
    The Unknown Soldier: A Play in Performance
    1featured Session: Gloria Montero
  • Design Education in an Accelerated World: How Are We Keeping Up?
    Design Education in an Accelerated World: How Are We Keeping Up?
    Workshop Session: Heitor Alvelos, Susana Barreto
  • Senior Academic Leadership
    Senior Academic Leadership
    Featured Workshop: Anne Boddington, Donald E. Hall, Joseph Haldane
  • The Forum: Agency in Times of Crisis
    The Forum: Agency in Times of Crisis
    Come share your thoughts and experiences as global educators and researchers.
  • A Journey Through the History of the Catalan Rumba
    A Journey Through the History of the Catalan Rumba
    Rumba Catalana Performance and Workshop: Joan Delgado, Agustín Gálvez

Networking Sessions

Conference Programme & Abstract Book

The online version of the Conference Programme is now available to view below via the Issuu viewing platform. Alternatively, download a PDF version. The Conference Programme can also be viewed on the Issuu website (requires a web browser). An Issuu app is available for Android users.

Click to download as a PDF

The Conference Programme contains access information, session information and a detailed day-to-day presentation schedule.

Attendee Guide

Please carefully read the Attendee Guide.

Pre-Recorded Virtual Presentations

A number of presenters have submitted pre-recorded virtual video presentations. We encourage you to watch these presentations and provide feedback through the video comments.

Virtual Video Presentations
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Important Information Emails

All registered attendees will receive an Important Information email and updates in the run-up to the conference. Please check your email inbox for something from "iafor.org". If you can not find these emails in your normal inbox, it is worth checking in your spam or junk mail folders as many programs filter out emails this way. If these did end up in one of these folders, please add the address to your acceptable senders' folder by whatever method your email program can do this.

Accepted Presentations

One of the greatest strengths of IAFOR’s international conferences is their international and intercultural diversity. As of September 4, 2026, BAMC2026 has received over 250 submissions from 71 countries and territories - including: Brazil, Canada, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Nigeria, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the UAE, the UK, and the United States.

Accepted Submissions
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Previous Programming

View details of programming for past BAMC conferences via the links below.

BAMC2025 BAMC2024 BAMC2023
BAMC2022 BAMC2021 BAMC2020
Brian Aycock
Chuo University, Japan

Biography

Dr Brian Aycock is an Associate Professor of Law at Chuo University, Japan) He is also a Senior Research Associate in the Refugee Law Initiative’s Internal Displacement Research Programme and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the RLI Working Paper Series.

His research focuses on state responsibility for climate-induced displacement and the development of international protection frameworks in response to environmental harm. His work examines the intersection of refugee law, subsidiary protection, and international legal obligation, with particular attention to comparative approaches in Japan and Europe.

He has conducted field research on planned relocation in Fiji and has presented his research internationally in Japan, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He has also consulted with the Japanese Ministry of the Environment on legal responses to disaster displacement.

Dr Aycock earned a PhD in International Law from International Christian University, Japan, in 2023 and an MA (Distinction) in Refugee Protection from the University of London, United Kingdom, in 2019.

Keynote Presentation (2026) | TBA
Alex Seago
Richmond American University London, United Kingdom

Biography

Professor Alex Seago received his BA in American Studies from the University of Birmingham, United States, his MA in American Studies from the University of Kansas, United States, and his PhD in Cultural History from the Royal College of Art, United Kingdom. During an academic career spanning almost 50 years, he has taught a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in sociology, cultural studies, popular culture, criminology, development studies, art, and design history for several British and American universities and colleges of art, including the Royal College of Art, where he was responsible for supervising MPhil and PhD students. During the mid 1990s, Professor Seago developed the Research Methods lecture series for MPhil and PhD students at the Royal College of Art. His publications include Burning the Box of Beautiful Things (Oxford University Press, 1995), a cultural historical study of changes in graphic design at the RCA in the 1950s and early 1960s and Pop Art and Design (Bloomsbury Press, 2017) with Dr Anne Massey.

Panel Presentation (2026) | Educating for Hope: Creativity, Culture, and Social Change
Susana Barreto
University of Porto, Portugal

Biography

Susana Barreto is a researcher at LUME, Unexpected Media Lab and Associate Professor of Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto, Portugal. In recent years, Professor Barreto has been involved in research projects focused on preserving specialised knowledge at risk of disappearance, specifically those embedded in the experiences of retired professors, artists, researchers, and practitioners in the arts, crafts, and design. Her research interests focus on the role of ethics in visual communication, design and crime, design culture, visual methodologies, and visual/history collections.

Featured Workshop (2026) | Design Education in an Accelerated World: How Are We Keeping Up?

Previous Presentations

Panel Presentation (2025) | Black Box Revolutions: Unpacking the Dynamics Between Design, Technology, Arts and Education in 2025
Workshop Presentation (2024) | Communicating Knowledge Through the Wreckage of Disinformation:An Exploratory Workshop
Anne Boddington
IAFOR, Japan

Biography

Professor Anne Boddington is Executive Vice-President and Provost of IAFOR, and oversees the academic programs, research and policies of the forum.

Anne Boddington is Professor Emerita of Design Innovation and has held executive and senior leadership roles in Higher Education including as Dean of Arts & Humanities at the University of Brighton, Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, Business & Innovation at Kingston and Pro Vice Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange at Middlesex University.

In 2022 she concluded chairing the Sub Panel (32) for Art & Design: History, Practice & Theory as part of the Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) and has extensive experience in the governance and conduct of peer review, research evaluation and assessment in REF2014 (Sub Panel Deputy Chair and Equality Diversity Advisory Panel [EDAP]) and RAE2008. A former member of AHRC’s Advisory Board, she is the current Chair of the Advisory Board for the UKRI’s National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research (NICER) programme (£30M), Deputy Chair and a Trustee of the Design Council, the government’s strategic advisor for design, and a member of both the InnoHK Scientific Committee (Hong Kong) and the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications (HKCAAVQ).

Since the 1990’s Anne has worked across the UK and internationally with a wide range of quality assurance, professional, statutory, and regulatory bodies in the UK, Europe, the Middle East, Hong Kong, and India.

As an independent consultant she now works as a strategic advisor and mentor and is committed to promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion in practice, developing effective governance, supporting career development, reducing bureaucracy, and improving organisational design, integrity, and productivity in the changing workplace.

Previous Presentations

Panel Presentation (2025) | Soft Power in Contested Spaces: Education, the Arts, Language, and Media for Peace
Heitor Alvelos
University of Porto, Portugal

Biography

Heitor Alvelos is a Full Professor of Design at the University of Porto, Portugal, where he directs the ID+ Research Center at the university. Professor Alvelos is currently Vice-President of the European Academy of Design and a Member of Academia Europaea and the European Science Foundation. Prior posts include: Course Director of the PhD in Design at the University of Porto from 2011 to 2024; Chairman of the Scientific Board (HSS), Foundation for Science and Technology, from 2016 to 2022; Outreach Director for the UTAustin-Portugal Program for Digital Media from 2010 to 2014; and Senior Tutor at the Drawing Studio, Royal College of Art from 1999 to 2001. Professor Alvelos has led national and international design research projects since 2007 on the subjects of heritage, disinformation, media philosophy, and the ecology of perception.

Featured Workshop (2026) | Design Education in an Accelerated World: How Are We Keeping Up?

Previous Presentations

Panel Presentation (2025) | Black Box Revolutions: Unpacking the Dynamics Between Design, Technology, Arts and Education in 2025
Workshop Presentation (2024) | Communicating Knowledge Through the Wreckage of Disinformation:An Exploratory Workshop
Donald E. Hall
Binghamton University, United States

Biography

Donald E. Hall is Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Binghamton University (SUNY), USA. He was formerly Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering at the University of Rochester, USA, and held a previous position as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University, USA. Provost Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies. Over the course of his career, he served as Jackson Distinguished Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English (and previously Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages) at West Virginia University. Before that, he was Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for 13 years. He is a recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award at CSUN, was a visiting professor at the National University of Rwanda, was Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He served on numerous panels and committees for the Modern Language Association (MLA), including the Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, and the Convention Program Committee. In 2012, he served as national President of the Association of Departments of English. From 2013-2017, he served on the Executive Council of the MLA.

His current and forthcoming work examines issues such as professional responsibility and academic community-building, the dialogics of social change and activist intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational, and sexual selves. Among his many books and editions are the influential faculty development guides, The Academic Self and The Academic Community, both published by Ohio State University Press. Subjectivities and Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies were both published by Routledge Press. Most recently he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, co-edited a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Though he is a full-time administrator, he continues to lecture worldwide on the value of a liberal arts education and the need for nurturing global competencies in students and interdisciplinary dialogue in and beyond the classroom.

Professor Donald E. Hall is a Vice-President of IAFOR. He is Chair of the Arts, Humanities, Media & Culture division of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2024): The Work of the University in Perilous Times
Keynote Presentation (2023): There Is No New Normal
Gloria Montero
Novelist; Dramatist; Poet, Spain

Biography

Ms Gloria Montero is a novelist, playwright, and poet who grew up in a family of Spanish immigrants in North Queensland, Australia. After completing her studies in theatre and music, Ms Montero began working in radio and theatre, later moving to Canada where she continued her career as an actress, singer, writer, scriptwriter, and broadcaster.

Ms Montero is the Co-founder of the Centre for Spanish-Speaking Peoples in Toronto, which was established in 1972. She served as a consultant on Immigrant Women to the Multicultural Department of the Secretary of State, Government of Canada in 1973. She has organised international conferences, including ‘Amnistia’ in 1970 and ‘Solidaridad’ in Toronto 1974. Ms Montero has also consulted film, including her serving as a consultant-interviewer on Dreams and Nightmares (A-O Productions, California), a film that won international awards in Florence, Moscow, Leipzig, and at the American Film Festival in 1975. Her film Crisis in the Rain (Montero-Fulton Productions) won the Gold Camera Award at the American Film Festival in 1982.

Since 1978, Ms Montero has been living in Barcelona, where she has continued to write and publish. Best known among her theatre work is the award-winning ‘Frida K.’, which has toured Canada and held international performances in New York, Mexico, Spain, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden, and Latvia.

Previous Presentations

Reading Session (2025): Dramatised Reading: The Unknown Soldier by Gloria Montero
Featured Interview (2022): Gloria Montero Asks Joseph Haldane to Tell His Story
Keynote Presentation (2021): “In Conversation with Gloria Montero”
Keynote Presentation (2020): KNOCK KNOCK... WHO'S THERE?
Discussion Panel (2020): “In Conversation with Gloria Montero”
Interdisciplinarity, Creativity and Learning in a World of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
Keynote Presentation: Anne Boddington

This talk explores interdisciplinarity in a rapidly changing world, where artificial (or super) intelligence, technological determinism, and nationalistic rhetoric continually challenge human creativity, learning, research, and wisdom, while dominating our news and social media feeds. What constructive role might higher education play? How might teaching, research, and innovation prepare future generations while prompting us to reflect on why we teach what we already know, and at times, in places and spaces that are not conducive to learning?

The structures that govern higher education—outcomes-based education, modularity, and credit accumulation—have become a ubiquitous toolbox and common currency, brokered internationally through a language that is rarely challenged or used creatively. Institutional systems instead use these structures to automate and allocate workloads and teaching spaces, and to monitor attendance and performance, creating vast unresponsive machines for learning, styled with a 21st-century gloss.

Creative communities in arts, design and architecture worldwide have often resisted these systems, advocating instead for interdisciplinary, less prescriptive frameworks that allow subjects to bleed into one another. Yet such approaches often appear unstructured, laissez-faire or even irresponsible as higher education has become increasingly transactional, tied to employability and economic growth rather than curiosity, learning for its own sake and practical application.

Important questions remain about why, what, when, and where learning occurs, and how we might use the tools at our disposal more creatively and effectively. How can higher education create the conditions in which innovation and ideas can flourish, producing confident, resilient and intellectually adaptable graduates who understand that the future is not a place we go, but a place we must imagine collectively and take responsibility for shaping?

Read presenter's biography
The Unknown Soldier: A Play in Performance
1featured Session: Gloria Montero

Polarisation in today's world bears a striking resemblance to the political climate of 1936. Spain was a republic when a military uprising against the democratically elected Popular Front government led to a devastating war. Solidarity was immediate: 60,000 men and women from some 50 countries volunteered to fight with the Republic in the International Brigades.

In this featured session, award-winning playwright Gloria Montero brings The Unknown Soldier to life through performance, telling the story of how a musical prodigy from Canada is forced beyond his piano by the 1929 Crash and the subsequent Depression. The reality of his life leads him to the Spanish Civil War. The performance portrays how political upheaval shapes individual lives and highlights international solidarity, themes that remain relevant today.

Read presenter's biography
Senior Academic Leadership
Featured Workshop: Anne Boddington, Donald E. Hall, Joseph Haldane

This roundtable and interactive session will explore the career paths of academic leaders and provide tips on the skills needed to succeed in leadership positions. Speaking from a variety of national and professional contexts, the session leaders will describe their individual paths to leadership roles and the trade-offs that often accompany a career in higher education leadership and administration. Following the brief presentations, audience members will be asked to provide their own thoughts and observations on successful and unsuccessful leadership styles, as well as engage in an active discussion of the potential for academic leaders to make positive changes within their institutions and professional organisations.

Read presenters' biographies
Design Education in an Accelerated World: How Are We Keeping Up?
Workshop Session: Heitor Alvelos, Susana Barreto

The workshop will address the challenges design educators are facing in a world that is changing faster than our curricula. It will touch on perplexing technologies, with AI at the forefront, shifting professional expectations, and how we have been managing to prepare students for futures we struggle to anticipate.

A contextual presentation will be followed by an open conversation and a hands-on activity mapping out testimonies and action plans for the following three fronts:

These topics will converge in a collective position paper/manifesto for design education in times of rapid change, co-authored by those present who wish to participate.

The action-based moments will alternate with a joint critical reflection towards future publications on the subject of design education in an accelerated world. Delegates will gain renewed insights into the current fast pace of design education and contribute to novel ways of acting upon the resulting issues of this speed.

Read presenters' biographies
Educating for Hope: Creativity, Culture, and Social Change
Panel Presentation: Brian Aycock, Anne Boddington, Alex Seago, Joseph Haldane

This panel will explore the role higher education might play in responding to turbulent times, supporting human agency and flourishing, generating social and cultural transformation, and creating conditions for optimism and hope. Taking Barcelona as a resonant setting and reflecting on its social, political and urban transformation over the past fifty years, the panel brings together ideas from Spain, the United Kingdom and IAFOR’s international network. It asks what conditions are required today to enable, empower and enact change.

Our news feeds predominantly report wars, energy and economic crises, and threats to peace, democracy, human rights and the climate, often distorted by AI bots and hostile state actors. The panel will consider the roles teachers, researchers, students and higher education institutions might play, and how education might shift national narratives, engender confidence and shape a more hopeful and peaceful future.

The panellists will examine examples from the United Kingdom and Spain, considering how post-war reforms in British art education created spaces for experimentation that contributed to movements such as Swinging London, Glam and Punk. In Spain, La Movida followed Franco’s death in 1975, expressing democratic and cultural change through music, film and fashion. Barcelona’s 1992 Olympic Games and Cultural Olympiad brought together politics, civic life, urban planning, arts and design in the city’s international reimagining.

How can we strengthen human-to-human engagement, bridge gaps and reach the many places that AI cannot, and that are distinctly and undeniably human? Across these examples, the panel asks what we might learn about education’s capacity to foster hope, encourage collective action, and help students understand that the future is not predetermined. It will explore how to engender tenacity, perseverance, and hope when passivity and apathy are easier, and how education might facilitate creative resistance, effective action, and social exchange.

Read presenters' biographies
The Forum: Agency in Times of Crisis
Come share your thoughts and experiences as global educators and researchers.

Humanity faces various crises on many fronts, what has been termed a ‘polycrisis’. First coined by French theorists Edgar Morin and Anne-Brigitte Kern in the 1990s and later popularised in 2016 by Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, a polycrisis describes a situation in which multiple challenges coalesce into a complex web of interconnected crises, creating impacts greater than any single crisis alone. These include, among others, the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI), democratic backsliding, declining trust in political institutions, demographic changes and population ageing, and climate change.

Often, we feel helpless in the face of challenges like these, while those with decision-making power discuss and make decisions and solutions for us. Agency, defined as the capacity, power, and freedom to make independent choices, form intentional goals, and take actions that shape one's own life and environment, is increasingly constrained by the social, political, economic, and technological systems in which we live. Although we can not directly control these systems, humans can still exercise some influence in the communities, societies, and contexts they live in.

What agency remains to us as educators, artists, professionals, and individuals? How can we contribute to meaningful change? The Forum session at BCE/BAMC2026 invites participants to reflect on the possibilities of human agency in times of polycrisis.

Read presenters' biographies
A Journey Through the History of the Catalan Rumba
Rumba Catalana Performance and Workshop: Joan Delgado, Agustín Gálvez

In the 1950s, the rumba catalana or Catalan rumba developed within the gypsy community of Barcelona out of the fusion of flamenco and other international musical styles. Today, some 75 years later, UNESCO is being asked to declare this popular foot-stepping rhythm as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

As we prepare for the UNESCO declaration, key questions must be explored to truly understand the art form. Who really developed the Catalan rumba? In what neighbourhood of Barcelona did it develop? What are the basic elements that characterise it? What makes it different from the Cuban and Flamenco rumbas? What is the famous ventilador, an essential feature of the rumba catalana? Barcelona guitarist Joan Delgado and vocalist Agustín Gálvez address these questions as they lead the audience through the origin and history of the rumba catalana in a participatory musical exploration of this fascinating rhythm, ever present at any popular festival in the region.

With only a guitar and two palms to clap, you need nothing more to set up a great shindig like Peret himself might have done.

Read presenters' biographies