14th December, 5pm.
This free online webinar is hosted by the Centre for Religion in Society. Book by clicking here.
Is it possible for everyone to experience a sense of belonging? Why is there an increasing sense of exclusion in many sectors of society? What might it take for us to create inclusive communities? This webinar addresses these questions from various perspectives to highlight instances of exclusion in global development paradigms, in our institutions and in everyday community experiences. The panellists from various cultural backgrounds discuss these issues from their own lived experiences as well as their professional contexts. The webinar also offers some practical ways by which small steps could be taken towards reshaping existing spaces to include citizens in decision-making processes, create equal access to resources while imagining new untapped spaces for inclusive and diverse global development agenda.
Meet the Panelists
Ruby Quantson Davis is a peace and development researcher/practitioner with nearly 20 years’ global experience in public policy research and advocacy, deliberative conversations, community engagement and institutional development. Ruby specialises in strengthening capacity for conflict prevention and peace processes, in places of political polarization, religious differences, ethnic, racial and gender divides. She has worked extensively within Africa and the South Pacific; Israel and the United States, using innovative ways of reflecting, learning, documenting and sharing knowledge. She currently serves as the Senior Learning and Impact Advisor at Peace Direct, the international charity in London. She is an Associate Member of Wesley House, in Cambridge, U.K., a Faculty member of the Deliberative Democracy Institute, a former Fellow and Resident Scholar of the Kettering Foundation, U. S.A.
Shannon Paige is a Policy Associate at Peace Direct in Washington D.C., leading efforts on issues including decolonizing aid and peacebuilding, improving local ownership in peace processes and developing Peace Direct’s U.S. peacebuilding programming. Shannon facilitates conversations on the ‘Platform4Dialogue’ and contributes to developing educational materials on the Global Peacebuilding Act. Prior to that, she worked with Peace Direct as a Scoville Peace Fellow. She holds a B.A. in International Studies and Arabic from Kenyon College, where she wrote her senior capstone on how public perceptions of migrant domestic and sex workers impact the hostility of the legal system in their destination countries. She has worked with several small international non-profits, most recently at New Light, a non-profit based in Kolkata, India that works with migrant sex workers.
Organiser and Chair: Professor Pauline Kollontai, Professor Emerita, York St John University