The Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) has awarded the Jackie Kirk Outstanding Book Award to Mary Mendenhall, Associate Professor of International and Comparative Education at Teachers College, along with co-authors Gauthier Marchais, Yusuf Sayed, and Neil Boothby, for their book, Education and Resilience in Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The award-winning book offers a clear account of the key academic, policy and practice questions on education in crisis contexts and considers our capacity to develop just and resilient education systems.
“We are grateful for receiving this award and for having our respective longitudinal, participatory, and mixed-methods studies recognized,” said Mendenhall, whose work examines the impact of armed conflict and displacement on learners and teachers’ lives. “It is also a testament to the partnerships that were formed through this research that linked local, national, and international actors in meaningful ways.”
Mendenhall and her co-authors provide a crucial perspective on how interconnected humanitarian crises — stemming from armed conflict, natural disasters, forced displacement, and, more recently, a global health pandemic — have profoundly affected teaching and learning. The book assembles evidence from diverse research-practice partnerships in seven countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
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.
The award will be formally presented at the CIES 2025 Conference, in Chicago in March where the authors will be recognized for their significant contributions to the field.
Learn more about Education and Resilience in Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa, here.