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Dr. Vanessa Andreotti appointed Dean of Education 2023-2028

April 06, 2022

A portrait of Dr. Vanessa Andreotti

We are thrilled to share that Dr. Vanessa Andreotti has accepted the appointment to serve as Dean, Faculty of Education effective July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2028.

Dr. Vanessa Andreotti (she/hers) has been a full professor at the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia since 2017. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change and is the interim director of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. She was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2019.

She has previously held academic positions at the National University of Ireland, the University of Canterbury in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the University of Oulu, in Finland, where she was the Chair of the Global Education Departmental Unit from 2010 to 2013. She holds degrees from the Universities of Paraná, Brazil (B.Ed.), Manchester, UK (M.A.) and Nottingham, UK (Ph.D.).

Centering socially relevant approaches to teaching, research, and community engagement

Dr. Andreotti has worked extensively across sectors with NGOs, professional associations, governments, social movements, and communities. Her publications include analyses of political economies of knowledge production and discussions of the ethics of international development. She explores critical comparisons of different approaches to local and international collaborations with an emphasis on engagements with Indigenous, racialized, and other systemically marginalized communities.

As an experienced leader and passionate educator, Dr. Andreotti is committed to creating spaces of independent, multi-voiced, trans-disciplinary, critically informed, and socially and ecologically accountable debates about alternative futures.
I am delighted to accept this senior leadership position at UVic,” said Dr. Andreotti in a statement. “When I decided to apply for this role, I was drawn to the Faculty of Education’s strong commitment to socially relevant approaches to teaching, research, and engagements with local and global communities. I am committed to working with faculty, staff, and students to develop a vision for the future of the Faculty that responds to the pressing social and ecological challenges of our time, and that also makes space for different perspectives on shared issues of concern.

My intention is to do this in ways that centre collective well-being and honour our accountabilities to various communities and collaborators, particularly as this relates to issues of equity, Indigenous engagement, and decolonization. I very much look forward to working with you all starting in 2023.

Decolonial Futures

Dr. Andreotti brings a decidedly decolonial focus to her work. She leads the research initiative Decolonial Futures, a collective of researchers, educators, artists, students, partners and co-operations who explore possibilities for research outside institutionally established ways of doing, knowing, and understanding the world.

Decolonial Futures is structured to include collective-style membership, experiment-based research, and multimedia formats to share knowledge with the wider public. Their research problematizes and offers alternative approaches to education that reproduce paternalistic forms of relationships; simplistic solutions to complex problems; and ethnocentric ideals of sustainability, equity, justice, and change.

Planning for transition

In consultation with her Indigenous Elders, Dr. Andreotti has identified family commitments that have emerged that position her to take up the dean role beginning July 1, 2023. As such, the Committee strongly supports the opportunity of a transition year.

To begin her engagement with the Faculty, Dr. Andreotti will be appointed a Special Advisor effective January 1, 2023, to work in concert with an Acting Dean.

We are excited to welcome Dr. Andreotti to UVic and the Faculty of Education!