Sara Pan-Algarra, PhD candidate in Comparative and International Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, recently led the publication of the 2025 Special Issue on Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict: Lessons in Education. Sara is the 2024-2025 editor-in-chief of the academic journal Current Issues in Comparative Education (CICE). Along with a team of students (the executive board) from different disciplines at Teachers College, CICE released a Special Issue composed of 12 publications that address the relationship between climate change and education, considering the implications of climate change, conflict, and migration.
The full list of authors who contributed to this issue is: Oren Pizmony-Levy (Teachers College) and Sarah Alice Wagner (Columbia Climate School, Columbia University), Muhammad Arif, Aneta Ismail, and Yao Jia Li (Southwest University, China), Tien Pham (University of Toronto), Lauren Madden (The College of New Jersey), Sarah Marie Kistner and Maha Shoaib (University of Maryland), Tianshu Chen and Debojyoti Das (University of Edinburgh), Benjamin D. Scherrer (State University of New York at Oswego) and tavis d. jules (Loyola University Chicago), Catherine Wong (United Nations Development Programme), Radhika Iyengar (Columbia Climate School), Syed Nitas Iftekhar (Bard College Beijing Office for Asia-Pacific), Matthew Witenstein (University of New Mexico), and Karen Chand (Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Asia Headquarters), Srinitya Duvvuri (New York University), Jun Kajee (United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network); and lastly, Sara Pan-Algarra (Teachers College) with the editorial introduction.
Javiera Zamora Iturra, summer peer advisor in the International and Comparative Education Program, asked Sara some questions about the process of developing the Special Issue.
What inspired you to publish the Special Issue?
Sara’s dissertation research is on the impacts of climate disasters and climate displacement on adolescent girls' education in Honduras. As editor-in-chief of CICE, Sara wanted to allow other scholars to write about climate change and create a space for dialogue and attention to this important topic.
Are there any key takeaways or findings you hope readers will remember?
Sara explained that “the 12 manuscripts provide a comprehensive picture of the state of the literature on climate change and education, discussing relevant theories and first-hand qualitative and quantitative data.”
Was there anything in the editing process that surprised you or challenged your thinking?
Sara expressed that “there was a great deal of theorizing about pedagogies on climate change and education in the Special Issue.” “It surprised me that one could apply such a wide range of critical theories that go beyond climate change to the topic under consideration, to make the case for climate change education.”
Sara took the opportunity to thank everyone who contributed to CICE this academic year and made the publications possible, including Professor Regina Cortina at Teachers College, CICE’s Student-led Executive Board, CICE’s International Advisory Board, the authors in the Special Issue, and Esther M. Jackson and Kathryn Pope at the Columbia Library Journals.
The Special Issue is free to download here.
To learn more about CICE, follow their social media at X/Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. CICE The Podcast is also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
If you are interested in publishing a manuscript in CICE, the call for the 2025 Open Issue is open until September 3, 2025. CICE welcomes submissions written on any subject in the field of comparative and international education or other related disciplines, including sociology, economics, philosophy, history, anthropology, and political science. CICE invites contributions from teachers, administrators, professors, graduate students, policymakers, and education specialists from government, non-governmental organizations, and academia. The manuscripts, which can be papers, article responses, and book reviews, are accepted in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. Submission guidelines are available here. For further questions, please contact CICE at cice@tc.columbia.edu.
Written by Sara Pan-Algarra and Javiera Zamora Iturra.