RED is a team of international scholars from Africa, Europe and Latin America.
This is who we are.
Principal Investigators
Felicitas Macgilchrist heads the RED team. She is Professor of Digital Education and Schooling at the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg. Her research explores the cultural politics of educational technology, with a focus on critical, ethnographic and speculative approaches. To this end, she asks how society is changing as education enacts phenomena referred to as datafication, automation, algorithmification, AI, etc. She is also specifically interested in how edtech reproduces, exacerbates or contests inequality. She seeks out design justice projects that think education ‘otherwise’. Felicitas is co-editor of Learning, Media and Technology and Palgrave Studies on Educational Media.
Inés Dussel – Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison (2001). She is a currently a Full-Time Researcher at the Department of Educational Research, CINVESTAV, Mexico, a top leading public research institution in Latin America. Dussel served as Director of the Education Area, Latin American School for the Social Sciences (Argentina), from 2001 to 2008. She has published 10 books, edited 4, and has written close to 200 chapters in books and articles published in refereed journals, in six languages. In 2018 Dr. Inés Dussel received the Humboldt Research Award, granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (Germany), in recognition of her outstanding research trajectory.
Thomas Hillman is Professor of Applied IT for Education at the University of Gothenburg and Deputy Head of the Department of Applied IT. His main interest is the relationship between digitalisation and knowledge. His research aims to understand changes to how we learn when technologies transform how we produce, gain access to, and work with knowledge. This aim is pursued through the examination of knowledge processes on online digital platforms used by millions of people. Learning with these platforms is shaped by both the design of the technology and the practices that develop when the technology is used.
Introduction Video (YouTube)
Paul Prinsloo – Research Professor in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) in the Department of Business Management, University of South Africa (Unisa). He is also a Visiting Professor at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany and a Fellow from the European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN). His current research focuses on the collection, analysis and use of student data in learning analytics, graduate supervision and digital identity. He blogs at https://opendistanceteachingandlearning.wordpress.com/
Academic Coordinator
Lydia Heidrich works as an academic coordinator for the RED team. Before joining RED in October 2023, she had worked as a research assistant at the University of Bremen (UB), unit of intercultural education. She obtained her PhD from UB in 2024 with an ethnographic study on newly arrived immigrant students in Bremen/Germany. Her work and research interests include school and migration, discrimination, teacher professionalisation, theories of social practices, ethnography, as well as science and research management.
Researchers
Philip Kwashi Atiso Ahiaku is professional Educator and Postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Business Management at University of South Africa (UNISA). He holds a Ph.D. in Geography Education from the University of Zululand, South Africa. His research interests include teaching and learning, Environmental Education and inequalities in education. His current research project is making the Geography curriculum relevant to learners.
Sebastian Andreasson is a research engineer at the Human-Computer Interaction division in the Department of Applied IT, University of Gothenburg with a long industry experience working with app development and backend systems. Hyper Island alumni and co-founder of a tech-startup that was part of the STING incubator in Stockholm.
Annika Bergviken Rensfeldt is Associate Professor in Education at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Based on a critical sociological perspective on education and digitalisation, she is currently involved in research on teachers’ digital work involving platform technology and datafication issues funded by the Swedish worklife foundation Forte. Annika is also conducting policy research on the impact of global educational technology discourses, and networks of policy actors and technologies.
Felix Büchner is an educator, educational scientist and performing arts teacher from Hannover, Germany. He graduated from the Leibniz University Hannover in 2020 with master degrees in Education and Atlantic Studies. In his research he focusses on practices of human differentiation, language learning as well as artistic and cultural education. In his educational practice he coordinated the civic education project ‘Dialog macht Schule’ (Hannover/Berlin) and the language learning project ‘#sprachlernendesspiel’ (Hannover). For the project ‘RED’ he is a PhD researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute (Braunschweig).
Alejo González López Ledesma is a postdoctoral fellow at Argentina´s National Scientific Research Council and a Researcher and Professor at Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Argentinean and Latin American Literature (UBA) and a Master´s degree in Educational Technology (UBA). In 2020 he obtained his PhD in Educational Science (UBA) with an ethnographic study on digital technologies appropriations carried out by Language and Literature secondary school teachers and students of the Metropolitan area of Buenos Aires. His research interests include Language and Literature teaching practices, school culture, media education and critical digital literacies.
Patricia Ferrante holds a Ph.D in Social Sciences from FLACSO Argentina, a Masters Degree in International Relations (FLACSO/UDESA/Universidad de Barcelona) and a degree in Political Science (UBA). She is the coordinator of the digital education unit at the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (UNIPE) and a researcher at the Culture & Communication Area at FLACSO Argentina. Her current research focuses on uses of digital media in education, P2P culture and youth digital cultures.
Svea Kiesewetter holds a Master of Education in Biology and English and a Master of Science in Information Technology and Learning. She currently works as a PhD student at the Division of Learning, Communication and IT, Department of Applied IT, University of Gothenburg and is part of the Graduate Research School at the Centre for Educational Sciences and Teacher Research. Her research focuses on Datafication processes and practices in educational contexts.
Christina Löfving holds a Master of Education in Pedagogy and School Development, specializing in Action Research. She is a lecturer in teacher and principal education and has a lengthy background as a teacher. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the Department of Applied IT, University of Gothenburg. She is part of the interdisciplinary graduate school in educational science (CUL) in Gothenburg and the Swedish national-wide research school Upgrade on teacher education and the digitalization of the school system. Her research interest is in curriculum studies and digitalization. It aims to make a substantial contribution to the discussion of the conditions for the enactment of the emerging concept of digital competence in teaching practices.
Godfrey Chitsauko Muyambi is a SACE registered, qualified, and seasoned education professional with more than 20 years in the education sector. His area of specialization is Science and Technology Education. He has worked in multicultural communities in education and training in South Africa, Dubai, and Zimbabwe.
Godfrey C. Muyambi is involved in teaching through digital media and is passionate about research that focuses on the use of ICTs in education. He has presented research papers at international conferences on the use of cell phones in teaching and learning of Physical Sciences in South Africa. His current PhD study is on the adoption and use of digital media as instructional tools. He feels digital technology can help to fill the gap of social inequalities in education. Godfrey C. Muyambi is a results-oriented, passionate, and self-driven researcher who is knowledgeable with both qualitative and quantitative research approaches.
He holds a Master’s of Education in Natural Science Education degree (Cum Laude), UNISA, Honor’s Bachelor in Natural Science Education degree, UNISA, (South Africa) and a Bachelor of Education Degree in Educational Administration, Planning and Policy Studies (Zimbabwe Open University). Overall, Godfrey C. Muyambi is passionate about research and innovation in education, use of digital media in education, equality and inclusive Education. He looks forward to share and develop further in research work through collaboration with other seasoned gurus in his fields of interest.
Lina Rahm is an assistant Professor in the History of Media and Environment with specialization in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems at KTH, Stockholm, Sweden. Her previous research, on the historic and future transformations of the digital citizen, points to the important convergence of educational studies, science and technology studies, and historical studies. What she has stressed in this research is how education and educational imaginaries have always been a structural and political way to prepare citizens for the (technological) future.
Adriana Robles holds a PhD in social anthropology and has contributed to several educational research teams employing qualitative methods. Her research focuses on the learning of indigenous children in and outside of school. She has held teaching positions at various Mexican universities, primarily in the field of teacher training. Since 2022, she is a member of the RED research team at the Department of Educational Research, CINVESTAV, Mexico.
Simona Szakács-Behling is a senior researcher at the Media | Transformation department, Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig (Germany) and managing editor of the Journal On_Education. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Essex (UK), an MA in Sociology and Social Anthropology from Central European University (Budapest, Hungary), and a BA in Communication Studies from the State School of Political and Administrative Studies (Bucharest, Romania). Her research is concerned with Europeanization, global cultural change, and post-socialist transformations in education and schooling from transnational, qualitative, and comparative perspectives. In her current work she focuses on solidarity, cultural diversity, and global citizenship across different school forms embedded in various inter-/trans-nationalising structures and degrees of privilege. She is passionate about photography, film, and rock(s) and proud mother of two.
Marie Utterberg Modén is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Applied IT at University of Gothenburg. Her research focuses on how digital technology changes conditions for teaching practices. Marie is involved in research on digital textbooks with data-driven technology, teachers’ agency and situated fairness in algorithmic systems, and in/equality in education.
Federico Williams is a doctoral student at the Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas / Centro de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional in Mexico City.
His recent research focuses on education and migration, and he has used an ethnographic approach combined with visual methodologies. Federico´s masters thesis studied children’s and young people’s experience of migration at a shelter in Mexico City, which he pursued at DIE-CINVESTAV. He received his bachelor’s degree in sociology with at the Universidad Nacional de Santiago del Estero, Argentina.
Previous Team Members
Birte Schröder coordinated the international joint project from 2020 to 2023.
Chinaza Uleanya was postdoctoral researcher in the University of South Africa team.
Header photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash