Keynote Speakers

Dr. Peter T. Coleman holds a Ph.D. in Social-Organizational Psychology from Columbia University. He is Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University where he holds a joint-appointment at Teachers College and The Earth Institute and teaches courses in Conflict Resolution, Social Psychology, and Social Science Research. Dr. Coleman is Director of the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (MD-ICCCR) at Teachers College, Columbia University and Executive Director of Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4). He currently conducts research on optimality of motivational dynamics in conflict, power asymmetries and conflict, intractable conflict, multicultural conflict, injustice and conflict, environmental conflict, adaptive mediation dynamics, and sustainable peace. In 2003, he became the first recipient of the Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association (APA), Division 48: Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence, and in 2015 was awarded the Morton Deutsch Conflict Resolution Award by APA and a Marie Curie Fellowship from The EU. Dr. Coleman edits the award-winning Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice (2000, 2006, 2014) and his other books include The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts (2011); Conflict, Justice, and Interdependence: The Legacy of Morton Deutsch (2011), Psychological Components of Sustainable Peace (2012), and Attracted to Conflict: Dynamic Foundations of Destructive Social Relations (2013). His most recent book is Making Conflict Work: Navigating Disagreement Up and Down Your Organization (2014). He has also authored over 100 articles and chapters, is a member of the United Nation Mediation Support Unit’s Academic Advisory Council, is a founding board member of the Leymah Gbowee Peace Foundation USA, and is a New York State certified mediator and experienced consultant.

Dr. Xiaodong Lin, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, studies the impact of different learning environments, instructional activities, and new media on students’ motivation to learn and solve challenging problems, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related classes. Dr. Lin’s research uses biographical information, or “people knowledge,” to change students’ beliefs about achievement and to help them understand their own feelings about hard work and frustration encountered in school (metacognition). This places her work at the intersection of motivation, metacognition, technology, and STEM education. Dr. Lin has found through her research that learning about the struggles scientists experienced prior to success enhances students’ ability to deal with challenging STEM learning tasks. However, optimum learning benefits from these stories requires students to feel emotionally connected to the scientists and to recognize their own talents and potential to succeed through effort. This research, published in the Journal of Educational Psychology last month, was press released by the American Psychological Association. Since then, stories about Dr. Lin’s work have appeared in over 30 news media globally, including CBS.com News, PBS Kids, Science, New York Times, Quartz magazine, BBC News, Australia Network News, News India, and China’s People’s Daily. Dr. Lin’s work also earned her several awards, including being selected as the Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and receiving the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Early Career and Outstanding Research awards. This year, she was named the Yellow River Scholar by the Chinese government, and she is serving on the expert advisory board of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for the EDUCATION 2030 Initiative from 2015-2020.

George A. Bonanno, Ph.D. is a Professor of Clinical Psychology, Director of the Loss, Trauma, and Emotion Lab, and Director of the Resilience Center for Veterans and Families at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Professor Bonanno’s interests center on the question of how human beings cope with loss, trauma and other forms of extreme adversity, with an emphasis on resilience and the salutary role of flexible emotion regulatory processes. Professor Bonanno’s empirical and theoretical work has focused on defining and documenting resilience in the face of loss or potential traumatic events, including disaster, loss, terrorist attack, bio-epidemic, traumatic injury, life-threatening injuries medical events, and military deployment, and on identifying the range of psychological and contextual variables that predict both psychopathological and resilient outcomes. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation, and is featured in various print, television, and radio media. He recently authored The Other Side of Sadness (Basic Books).