The Freire Project

I am originally from Toronto, and now reside in Montreal. I studied for
two years in France in the early 1980s, which proved to be a formative
learning experience, and then undertook the rest of my university
studies in Canada in the areas of political science, sociology and
education. I completed my doctorate in the sociology of education at
the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of
Toronto in 1996, with my thesis examining anti-racism and institutional
culture in education. For a number of years I worked as a Senior Policy
Advisor in the Government of Ontario on education and equity policies
and programs. For the past few years, I have been a professor at
Youngstown State University, where I teach courses in multicultural
education, the sociology of education, diversity and leadership, and
qualitative methodology. My current research is broadly concerned with
social justice, with specific threads related to race and identity,
critical pedagogy, democracy and political literacy, media literacy,
and intercultural education. In 2007, I co-edited The Great White
North? Exploring Whiteness, Privilege and Identity in Education
(Rotterdam: Sense Publishers), and, in 2008, co-edited another book,
entitled Doing Democracy: Striving for Political Literacy and Social
Justice (New York: Peter Lang). I am currently finalizing two other
edited books dealing with intercultural education and youth culture,
respectively, and am writing a book on demcracy and critical pedagogy.
I am the co-founder and co-director of the Global Doing Democracy
Research Project, which aims to produce a range of studies
internationally, leading to critical, comparative analysis of how
democracy and education can be more effectively connected. I have a
blog on the Paulo and Nita Freire International Center for Critical
Pedagogy, where I am a Research Associate, on the theme of democracy
(econ-ocracy, which addresses the neo-liberal manifestations and
distortions of the true meaning of democracy). I also write poetry, and
have been fortunate enough to collaborate with Spanish-speaking
colleagues on several literary projects. Lastly, I have been involved
in a range of projects and initiatives in relation to solidarity with,
and development in, Latin America. My website is:
www.coe.ysu.edu/~paulcarr/.