Full Member of the Russian Academy of Education, Honorary Professor of the University of Wisconsin (Madison, USA), a head of International UNESCO Chair MSUPE “Cultural-historical psychology of childhood”. Vitaly Rubtsov is a leading scientist, a specialist in general psychology, pedagogical and age psychology.
Fyodor Vasiluk – professor, PhD in Psychology, Head of the Chair of the Individual and Group Psychotherapy of Faculty of the Counseling and Clinical Psychology MSUPE, Leading research fellow of the laboratory of counseling psychology and psychotherapy of Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education, head of the laboratory of scientific foundations of psychotherapy of the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education.
Professor (emeritus) at the University of Oulu and Professor of Psychology at the Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences, Vilnius from 2012. He is a head of the Research Laboratory of Play (LUES) and the scientific leader of the research project “Development of Self-regulation in Play”. He reads courses on Qualitative research methods and Cultural historical psychology for MA students.
Senior researcher and lecturer at the Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences, Vilnius from 2012. She teaches courses on Child development and narrative learning in play and Vygotskian theory of cultural development in childhood. She is the senior researcher in the Research Laboratory of Play (LUES) and the coordinator of research activities in the research project “Development of Self-regulation in Play”.
Bert van Oers (PhD) is professor ‘Cultural-historical theory of education’ at the VU University in Amsterdam. He is trained as an educational and developmental psychologist in the 1970s in the Netherlands and specialized since then in Cultural-historical Activity Theory (CHAT). His dissertation “Activity and Concept” (in Dutch) was defended in 1987. He is one of the founders of the CHAT-based educational concept (“Developmental Education”) that is becoming increasingly popular in Dutch primary schools and is currently being implemented as a play-based curriculum for children from 3–12 years old.
Harry Daniels is director of the Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research and Professor of Education: Culture and Pedagogy at the University of Bath, UK. He is also Adjunct Professor, Centre for Learning Research, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia and Research Professor, Centre for Human Activity Theory, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan. His research includes work on processes of social exclusion and processes of collaboration.
Sueli Salles Fidalgo is a Professor at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP). She holds Doctoral Degree in Applied Linguistics and Language Studies from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP) and two Postdoctoral Fellowships in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, both of which focused on Teacher Education for Children with Special Needs. Her major area of concern is teacher education focusing on those who work with children and adolescents who have been excluded from the school environment – some whilst still attending schools. Most of these students are seen as special needs.
Manolis Dafermakis (Dafermos) is associate professor in Epistemology of Psychology at the Department of Psychology, The University of Crete, Greece. His interests include cultural historical psychology, activity theory, critical psychology, history of psychology, and methodological and epistemological issues for the social sciences.
Dr. Nikolay Veresov is a Professor at Monash University, Australia. Nikolai was a Chair of International Scientific Program Committee of 2014 ISCAR Congress. He is a co-editor of Perspectives in Cultural-Historical Research Springer international book series. He has got his first PhD degree in Moscow in 1990. The second PhD was obtained in University of Oulu (Finland) in 1998.
Boris Elkonin – doctor of science in psychology, professor; head of laboratory “Psychology of elementary school children” of Psychology Institute, Russian Academy of Education; president of the International Association of Developmental Learning, and also editor-in-chief of the Journal «Cultural-Historical Psychology».
Professor Elkonin’s doctoral dissertation presented in 1995 was based on his book “Introduction to Development Psychology” published in 1994. Later this book was republished under the name “Development Psychology” in 2001, 2007 and 2008. In 2010 Prof. Elkonin published his book “Mediation. Action. Development”.
Dmitry Lubovsky, Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the Moscow State University of Psychology and Education. His research has focused on problems of the development of personality in the context of cultural and historical psychology. He develops the following research lines: the development of internal position of personality (the concept proposed by Lidia Bozhovich, Russian psychologist, L.S. Vygotsky’s follower, founded the cultural and historical approach in psychology of personality) during human life.
Esther Ramani is a Professor at the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University. She along with Michael Joseph developed a model of dual-medium tertiary education using an indigenous Africa language along with English. She is keenly interested in the development of cognition in the early years of schooling as well as at university level and the role of mediation in the scientific concept attainment.
Michael Joseph is currently an Associate Professor in the Education Department at Rhodes University, to which he moved after fifteen years at the University of Limpopo, where he helped to conceptualise the first dual-medium undergraduate degree using an African language as a medium of instruction and assessment. He has had a longstanding interest in Vygotsky’s work and has been teaching Vygotsky’s key ideas for several years in courses on the relation between language and cognition. His current interest is in the sociocultural analysis of children’s play with a focus on motivation.
Svetlana Alekhina is a prominent professional leader in the development of inclusive education in the Russian Federation. In recent years, she is a federal expert on the development of regional models of inclusive education in the subjects of the Russian Federation and the main creator of the training and skills of teaching staff. Under her leadership, created and realized monitoring studies of professional and psychological readiness of teachers for inclusive education in Russia.
Kenneth Mlungisi Ngcoza is a mathematics and science teacher by profession. At Rhodes University he is a Senior Lecturer in Science Education and a Deputy Head of Department at the Education Department, Faculty of Education. He has supervised a number MEd and PhD students most of whose research projects are on Vygotsky’s mediation of learning in science. He is the chairperson of the SAARMSTE Eastern Cape Chapter and his research interests include transformative professional development, science curriculum, socio-cultural contexts and indigenous knowledge systems.
PhD in Psychology, head of Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Modern Childhood and “Psy-Lingua” – Centre of Foreign Languages of MSUPE, senior researcher of the Laboratory for theoretical and experimental Problems of cultural-historical psychology MSUPE, lecturer of the Faculty of Educational Psychology of MSUPE.