AMI President Appointed to UNESCO’s Gandhi-Montessori-Luthuli Chair of Education for Peace and Transformative Solidarity
Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) is delighted to announce the appointment of its President, Alain Tschudin, to the Gandhi-Montessori-Luthuli Chair of Education for Peace and Transformative Solidarity.
This United Nations' Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Chair is co-hosted jointly by Stellenbosch University (SU) South Africa and St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge, England. It forms part of the global UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme which mobilises expertise of higher education and research institutions to address the interdependent challenges of today's increasingly complex world.
AMI Executive Director, Lynne Lawrence, commented: “We offer our most heartfelt congratulations to Alain on his appointment to this prestigious chair and believe his influence will ensure it has an enormous global impact. It is a particular delight for us to be able to share news of such a major and richly deserved academic appointment that also recognizes and celebrates Maria Montessori alongside Kasturba and Mahatma Gandhi, and Nokukhanya and Albert Luthuli.
She continued, “Gandhi met Montessori in 1931 and in his remarks noted, “You have very truly remarked that if we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children..”. The influence of Gandhi’s philosophy on Luthuli and the enduring friendship between the Gandhi and Luthuli families further establishes a rich and resonant connection that underpin the aims of the chair.”
AMI’s announcement of the appointment celebrates an auspicious and relevant date. On 19 June 1951 Maria Montessori addressed the first meeting of the Governing Board of the new UNESCO Institute for Education. She said, “Let us concentrate on this neglected age, on children at the pre-school age, and we shall set up a landmark to the Millennium, indicating a new path of justice and salvation in international endeavours.” Due to her engagement the second international seminar held at the new Institute in January 1953 took up the theme of the pre-school child.
Professor Tschudin commented: “It is humbling to receive this affirmation of the work we are doing. This award inspires us to deepen our transdisciplinary research and broaden our applied scholarship. It also motivates us to foster inclusive participation and to increase our social and environmental impact through a growing network of local and global partners."
The Chair's work aligns closely with UNESCO's two global priority areas, “Africa" and “Gender Equality" and its mission is to promote a culture of peace through education – viewed by UNESCO as a cornerstone of sustainable development, poverty eradication and intercultural dialogue. Work will focus on three inter-related areas:
- Education for Peace
- Human Rights for Social and Environmental Justice
- Transformative Solidarity
“This work is more relevant than ever," adds Tschudin, “as we face escalating global challenges—from climate change and conflict to displacement and economic uncertainty. The enduring friendship between the Gandhi and Luthuli families adds a profound human resonance. Maria Montessori, in turn, was one of UNESCO's co-founders.”
“In an era of rising ethno-religious nationalism and threats to universal rights, education for peace and transformative solidarity must be at the forefront of our efforts to uphold human dignity and planetary integrity."
The UNESCO Chair has been awarded for four years, until June 2029 to Professor Alain and will be located in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University and at St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, with Prof Dorcas Ettang of the International Centre of Non-violence at the Durban University of Technology, as the co-Chair.
More about UNESCO Chairs
A UNESCO Chair is a team led by a higher education or research institution that partners with UNESCO on a project to advance knowledge and practice in an area of common priority. There are currently some 1000 UNESCO Chairs and 45 UNITWIN Networks hosted in higher education institutions in 120 countries with some 10,000 individuals involved in the UNESCO Chairs programme.
A UNITWIN Network is a partnership between UNESCO and a network of higher education or research institutions of at least three institutions in different countries, at least two of which must be located in the Global South, and which pool their competencies and resources around particular theme(s).
The UNESCO Chairs and UNITWIN Networks act as think tanks and bridge-builders between the academic world, civil society, local communities, research and policymaking thereby strengthening UNESCO's research-training-policy-society nexus.
More about Alain Tschudin
Professor Alain Tschudin completed his PhD in Psychology in 1999 through the then University of Natal (The University of Kwazulu-Natal) on the comparative evolution of social complexity and intelligence in dolphins and primates. In 2007, he completed his second PhD in moral philosophy and theology on the meaning of being, at the University of Cambridge. Tschudin worked for the University of Seville and the European Commission on a project to foster social integration and economic participation for immigrant and ethnic minorities in Spain. He later returned to South Africa and ran the Conflict Transformation and Peace Studies Programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal using dialogics to pursue solidarity among residents and refugees, along with peace, democratisation and human rights initiatives in marginal communities. Tschudin has done humanitarian work with Save the Children International, with UNICEF in the Central African Republic and served as the UN's inter-agency Child Protection Assessment Coordinator for Northern Syria. He was Executive Director of Good Governance Africa, a pan-African NGO, in Johannesburg, Professor in the WITS School of Governance and lead consultant for the UN Special Advisor on Africa on the nexus approach to fast-tracking the SDGs across Africa. Subsequently, Alain was Director of the International Centre of Nonviolence at the Durban University of Technology. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland and is a Senior Research Associate at St Edmund's College, Cambridge. Since 2022, he has served voluntarily as President of the Association Montessori Internationale, the NGO set up by Dr Maria Montessori in 1929, headquartered in the Netherlands and he recently joined the Board of the Gorée Institute in Senegal.
