Date: Thursday August 03 and Friday August 04, 2017

Location: Lebanese American University

The Centre for Lebanese Studies at the Lebanese American University, the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, and the UCL Institute of Education hosted a two-day workshop on Community Researcher Training, Teacher Development and New Educational Technologies.

This is the second of a series of workshops for the ESRC-funded RELIEF Centre, a five-year collaborative project between University College London, the Centre for Lebanese Studies and the American University of Beirut. The RELIEF Centre is an interdisciplinary project aiming to speed up the sustainability transitions that the world critically requires in the context of large-scale movement of people. Focusing specifically on Lebanon, RELIEF will develop a programme of research and education that addresses the challenges of capacity building, public service provision and sustainable value creation in cities with high numbers of refugees.

This workshop explored the possibilities offered by new technologies to develop the research, teaching and learning capacities of host and refugee communities in Lebanon. The widespread access of smartphones, tablets and laptops means that people today can communicate with one another over large distances in a way that is fast, affordable and user-friendly. Technology offers people new ways of developing their capacities for research and education by connecting and working with educators, students and researchers in various institutions at home and around the world. They also presented stakeholders such as academics, governments and NGOs with new possibilities to engage communities in research and education in a more inclusive way.