Neil Boothby Receives Prestigious Jackie Kirk Outstanding Book Award from the Comparative and International Education Society
The Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) has awarded the Jackie Kirk Outstanding Book Award to Neil Boothby, Professor and Director of the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GC-DWC) in the Institute for Educational Initiatives (IEI) at the University of Notre Dame, along with co-authors Mary Mendenhall, Gauthier Marchais, and Yusuf Sayed, for their book, Education and Resilience in Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Jackie Kirk Award honors a published book that exemplifies Jackie Kirk’s commitment to gender equity, education in conflict-affected settings, identity, globalization, and participatory research methodologies. The award is supported by the Jackie Kirk Memorial Fund, established in 2010, and recognizes outstanding scholarship that advances understanding and practice in the field of education in emergencies.
Education and Resilience in Crisis provides an important lens for understanding how interlocking humanitarian crises caused by armed conflict, natural disasters, forced displacement and, more recently, a global health pandemic have adversely impacted teaching and learning. It brings together evidence from multiple, diverse research-practice partnerships in seven countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The authors provide a clear account of the key academic, policy and practice questions on education in crisis contexts and consider our capacity to develop just and resilient education systems.
The award will be formally presented at the CIES 2025 Conference, where the authors will be recognized for their significant contributions to the field.
“We are incredibly honored to receive the Jackie Kirk Outstanding Book Award,” said Boothby. “This recognition underscores the importance of our work in ensuring that education systems remain resilient in the face of crises, ultimately supporting the learning and well-being of children worldwide. We also want to thank the European Union for its multi-year support of research in complex emergencies—it is quite rare—and much needed!”
“The Institute for Educational Initiatives congratulates Neil and his co-authors on this well-deserved recognition,” said Matt Kloser, Hackett Family Director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives. “We look forward to celebrating their achievements at the upcoming CIES conference.”
To learn more about Education and Resilience in Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa, visit: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/education-crisis-and-resilience
About the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GC-DWC)
The Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GC-DWC) at the Institute for Educational Initiatives at the University of Notre Dame, collaborates with researchers and practitioners to ensure the wellbeing—physical, emotional, social, and cognitive—of children and adolescents in low-resource and conflict-affected settings. Established to serve as a coherent platform for the Institute for Educational Initiative’s growing portfolio of global child development and learning programs, the GC-DWC creates environments that foster resilience and encourage children and adolescents to thrive. Using an innovative whole child development approach tailored to context-specific needs, the GC-DWC translates research into timely and thoughtful action, adapts research tools to improve the development of learning programs and policies, and activates systems (families, schools, communities) to lift children and adolescents out of adversity.
For more information about the GC-DWC and its initiatives, visit https://iei.nd.edu/gc-dwc/about.
About the Institute for Educational Initiatives
Founded in 1996, the Institute for Educational Initiatives consists of more than two dozen initiatives that strive to improve education for all youth, particularly the disadvantaged, paying special, though not exclusive, attention to Catholic schools. Through research, the formation of teachers and leaders, and direct service to educational systems, the IEI’s scholars and practitioners pursue interdisciplinary collaborations to better understand and improve PK-12 education both in the United States and internationally.
For more information about the IEI and its initiatives, visit iei.nd.edu.
