Visiting Scholars and Students
Gang Zhu
Gang Zhu
Associate Professor, The Institute of International and Comparative Education, East China Normal University
Gang ZhuAssociate Professor, The Institute of International and Comparative Education, East China Normal University

Gang Zhu is an Associate Professor at the Institute of International and Comparative Education, East China Normal University. His scholarship is situated at the intersection of teacher education, urban education, and comparative education. His research has been sponsored by the National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences, China Scholarship Council, Shanghai Overseas Returned Scholars Association, International Association on Teachers and Teaching, and the Southwest Educational Research Association. Dr. Zhu sits on the editorial boards of Race, Ethnicity, and Education (Routledge), Multicultural Education Review (Routledge), and the International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research (ERIC), and was an Assistant Editor of Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education (Routledge).
Vannesa Hortal de Lucas
Vannesa Hortal de Lucas
Doctoral researcher and educator in the Department of Educational Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid
Vannesa Hortal de LucasDoctoral researcher and educator in the Department of Educational Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid

Vannesa Hortal de Lucas is a doctoral researcher and educator in the Department of Educational Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid, currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Education through a fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. Her research focuses on philosophy of education, with a particular emphasis on the work of Maxine Greene. Through a hermeneutic approach, she is exploring Greene’s contributions to aesthetic education and political formation in pluralistic societies. Vannesa is also involved in several research and teaching innovation projects focused on ethical-civic education, critical thinking, and writing practices in teacher training programs.
Steven Zhao
Steven Zhao
Steven Zhao

Steven Zhao’s research largely focuses on questions around ‘meaning,’ particularly in relation to affordance theory, complex adaptive systems, and wide cognition (e.g., distributed, embodied, embedded, extended & enactive cognition). By employing an interdisciplinary approach, his dissertation examined ‘meaning’ as a potential conceptual ground to articulate the idiosyncrasies and normativity of human ‘adaptivity.’ At Teachers College, he will be working with Dr. David Hansen to examine the relationship between education and cultural polarization with specific attention to ‘hidden curricula’ and the history of education.