EAEA General Assembly and Annual Conference 2022: Transformative Learning and Values

She is working on adult skills policies, and in particular on the Commission initiative on individual learning accounts and on the action “Skills for Life” of the EU Skills Agenda. Klara is coordinating the Commission expert group on Adult Learning and the Network of national coordinators for the implementation of the EU Agenda on Adult Learning. She has until recently worked on higher education policies and the Bologna Process and developed the Commission’s initiative on an EU approach to micro-credentials.

Her aim is to welcome different target groups and to accommodate each of them in their unicity. In doing so the museum educates visitors on the historical events that took place in Mechelen and also plays a role in assessing universal mechanisms linked to racism, discrimination, exclusion, group violence still at play in society today. In this way, the museum makes a fundamental contribution to the educational and social project, in which citizenship, democratic resistance and the defence of individual basic freedoms are central.

She developed a systemic and cooperative approach to adult education aimed at social justice, weaving participatory and arts-based methods, biographical writing, embodied experiences, critical and cultural reflexivity, and Socratic dialogue. She co-edited books on Stories that Make a Difference (2016), Embodied Narratives (2014) and with Linden West (2018) Transforming Perspectives in Lifelong Learning and Adult Education: A dialogue, receiving the 2019 Cyril O. Houle Award from AAACE.

She is important voice for the migrant community in Ireland and she is now trained in and facilitates intercultural dialogue in Ireland. Deborah is a member of several community programmes such as sanctuary runners and Saoirse (Ethnic Hands on Deck), a Social Enterprise project run by migrant women living in Direct Provision Centres in Cork City and County. Deborah is now studying Global Youth Work and Development in University of Maynooth, Kildare.

Currently she focuses her research practice on the entanglement of the educational, activist, and artistic, trying to incorporate the critical, embodied, spatial and imaginative into a repertoire of action. Maksimović has an intensive cooperation with NGOs, cultural institution and activist organizations, trying to build stronger links among academia and the civil sector, but also to explore public spaces as participatory educational sites. She is a part of ESREA steering committee and a co-convenor of the ESREA network Active Democratic Citizenship and Adult Learning. Maksimović is also a member of Škograd collective.

She supports teams, individuals, networks and organisations with systemic approaches to leverage their impact for building regenerative systems. She is the founder of „futurlabor – Institute for systemic future design“ (est. 2015) and guest lecturer at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany.

In 2021, she founded BILDUNGSFRAUEN and has worked since then as a coach, mentor and consultant. Her podcast BILDUNGSFRAUEN features inspiring women from across the education sector.

She is part of the management team at Centre for Promoting Lifelong Learning from Timisoara, Romania and together with her colleagues strongly advocates for the role of adult education in public policy reform at all levels.