Larisa Kasumagić-Kafedžić, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, is a 2004 US-Canada Program MMEG grantee.
Larisa is an advocate for peace and nonviolence through education. She is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Sarajevo and, currently, at Cornell University. As a 2022–23 Fulbright Visiting Scholar Fellow at Cornell, she lectures on and researches the role of teachers as agents of change in education for peace and social responsibility. She founded the Peace Education Hub at the University of Sarajevo in 2000.
Larisa holds an MPS in International Development and Education from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in English Language Pedagogy and Intercultural Education from the University of Sarajevo. She was a 2003-04 Cornell University Hubert Humphrey Fellow. Her peace-building engagement began during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, when she worked on child war trauma, peace education, and nonviolent communication with teachers and schools in conflict-affected communities.
Larisa’s teaching, writing, and research focus on intercultural, critical, and peace pedagogies in teacher education and language and culture didactics. She recently published Peace Pedagogies in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Theory and Practice in Formal Education, which presents positive examples of successful pedagogical practices in the country and recommends the incorporation of peace pedagogies into formal teacher education.
Larisa has also published on the engagement of youth in community development. She is an advocate of incorporating peace education into community youth development programs in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina; post-war healing and reconciliation through psycho-social support and pedagogical programs; working closely with schools and communities in nonviolence education; using participatory methods of community development; developing modules and educational methodologies of the “Facing History and Ourselves” program that focuses on civic education through teachings of the Holocaust and other instances of extreme violence across the world; and teaching nonviolent communication based on peace pedagogies and humanistic psychology principles.
