The Sixth UM Global Citizenship Education Symposium

In the Fall of 2023 UNESCO Member States agreed on the revised text of the 1974 Recommendation concerning education for international understanding, co-operation and peace and education relating to human rights and fundamental freedoms. This document indicates how education should evolve in the face of contemporary threats and challenges: education should aim to be transformative, seeking to prepare, motivate and empower learners to take informed decisions and actions to promote peace, human rights, sustainable development and global citizenship.

What can you expect?

The theme of this year's symposium is digital citizenship, acknowledging that the Council of Europe has declared 2025 to be the Year of Digital Citizenship Education.

The event will begin on 13 January 2026, at 10:00h.

Location
The Symposium is held in Tapijn Brasserie, Tapijnkazerne 20, 6211 ME Maastricht and EDLAB, Tapijnkazerne 23, 6211 KD Maastricht.

Registration
You can pick up your badge at the registration desk at Tapijn Brasserie. You can also select a ticket for the afternoon breakout sessions. These tickets remain available until the lunch break.

Morning programme (Tapijn Brasserie)
09.30 – 10.00: Registration
10.00 – 10.15: Welcome
10.15 – 11.15: The first keynote will be delivered by Gert Biesta, who is a renowned educational philosopher, recently acknowledged as ranking in the Top 2% of Scientists, Professor of Public Education at Maynooth University, Ireland, and currently also acting as advisor to the Council of Europe on Digital Citizenship Education.
11.15 – 11.30: Break 
11.30 – 12.30: First Break-Out Session
12.30 – 13.30: Lunch  

Afternoon programme
13.30 – 14.30: The second keynote presenter is Jason Goulah, pioneering and award-winning scholar in the fields of Soka studies in education and transformative and socioecological perspectives in culture and language education and director of the Institute of Daisaku Ikeda Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, IL.
14.30 – 15.30: Second break-out session

15.30 – 16.00: Plenary wrap-up

16.00: Drinks
 

Breakout sessions will be dedicated to various topics (including disinformation and democracy and responsible use of AI tools). In one of these sessions, teachers from our interdisciplinary Global Studies bachelor will lean back and ponder on how global citizenship education has taken shape over the course of the five years that have passed since the start of the programme. More idetails will be provided as we update the schedule.

 

You can find more information on GCEd at our website.