From September 2013-August 2025, Lauren Ila Misiaszek (she/her) was Associate Professor in the Institute of International and Comparative Education at Beijing Normal University, China. Lauren is Past Secretary General of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) (2016-2019), a past Associate Director of the Paulo Freire Institute, UCLA (2018-2022), and a Co-Founder and Fellow of the International Network on Gender Social Justice, and Praxis. Lauren was a 2012-2013 US-UK Fulbright Scholar. She is currently Invited Researcher at the Centro de Estudos Interdisciplinares em Educação e Desenvolvimento (CeiED) (Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Education and Development), Universidade Lusófona, Lisbon, Portugal (2020-present).
Since 2007, Professor Misiaszek’s research crosses linguistic and geographic boundaries at the intersection of the humanities and social sciences, topics that span intersectional social justice issues, social movements and nonformal education, critical sociology of higher education, and postfoundational comparative education. Orbiting China’s Belt and Road (currently under review), is her first sole-authored, creative-critical, and hybrid manuscript that explores her 13 years of experience living and struggling as a foreign woman educator from the outset of China’s Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative. Her current project for a second sole-authored manuscript expands previous fieldwork on the B&R and in BRICS countries.
Her academic publications include leading-edge SSCI articles and special issues, textbooks, edited and co-authored books. She has been a keynote speaker and a highlighted presenter at international conferences and an invited speaker at multiple global institutions.
Her courses receive top student evaluations, and her BA, MA and PhD advisees receive prestigious graduate student awards and go on to educational leadership positions in their home countries. She has received various teaching awards throughout her career.
Professor Misiaszek brings extensive professional experience to her academic research and teaching. Other posts she has held include the following: national program manager for the US Veterans Administration, sustainable development fellow in Nicaragua, and outreach coordinator and translator in a free clinic in the US.
Professor Misiaszek has also published in reviewed poetry journals. She has been awarded a 2026 writing residency at the International Writers’ and Translators’ House in Latvia and has received various other creative-critical writing honors in the US and China.
She speaks, writes, and publishes in English, Mandarin, Spanish, and Portuguese and studies multiple other languages.
Professor Misiaszek holds BAs in Hispanic Studies and Sociology from the College of William & Mary (Virginia, USA), and an MA and PhD (2009) in Social Sciences and Comparative Education from UCLA.
When not traveling to research the B&R, Lauren resides in the Southern Cone of South America. She uses her middle name Ila professionally to honor her grandmother from Appalachia (a cultural region in the US) who was an educator.
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