Dr. Jodie Birdman

Dr. Jodie Birdman works in the Sustainability Education Research Group (SERG) on the new Education for Sustainable Development profile in Leuphana’s profile studies for student teachers.

Her research and teaching deal with transformative teaching and learning processes and with how education can help learners build community and develop a sense of agency. This has included competence-oriented and human-rights-oriented education with collaborative and reflective approaches that start from real-world experience. In recent years her teaching has focused on international digital collaboration, project-based learning, cosmopolitan citizenship and self-empowerment through reflective action.

Before joining SERG, she held research and teaching positions at Leuphana’s Institute of English Studies and Institute for Ethics and Transdisciplinary Research. She completed her PhD in sustainability and education at Leuphana in the Educating Future Change Agents project with Arizona State University. She holds a master’s degree in International Studies in Education from the University of Iceland and trained as a teacher in the United States before moving to Germany, where she worked as an English language trainer and business coach.