Prof em. Heid Leganger-Krogstad
Interim President
Heid is Professor em. in Philosophy of Religious Education at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society in Oslo, Norway. She serves as a board member elected from the Nordic countries. Teacher education has been her occupation at both Finnmark University College and the University of Oslo. Her Ph.D. is on The religious dimension in Intercultural Education, and she has served as an expert related to this in working groups at the Council of Europe. At MF, she was training both church and school educators, and for many years, she was head of the master’s program for Church Education. Her main research interests are bible didactics, reception studies, contextual theory, minority groups in schools, non-formal education in churches and school and church relations.
Bianca Kappelhoff
Assistant Secretary, board member
Bianca is an educational researcher at the Comenius-Institute in Germany. In this role, she is responsible for the field of Protestant Responsibility for Education in Europe and promotes European exchange on questions concerning the religion and education. Besides ICCS she is also involved with other European wide networks as EFTRE, IV and CoGREE.
Before joining the Comenius Institute, she worked as a project manager in the Education Department of the EKD for the international network of Protestant schools “GPENreformation”. Bianca studied political sciences with a focus on European studies in a French-German double degree programme.
Dr Kaarina Lyhykäinen
Board member
Kaarina has worked as an officer for religious education in Helsinki Orthodox diocese since 1994. Her main areas of work are to support Orthodox religious education in public primary and secondary schools and to lead educational work in Helsinki Orthodox diocese. She is writing her PhD thesis about Orthodox religious education in European Union member countries and has university degrees in theology (both Orthodox and Protestant) and education and organization psychology and Egyptology.
Dr Tania ap Siôn
Secretary
Tania is Reader of Religions, Humanities and Education at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln, Co-Director of the St Giles’ RE Centre in Wrexham, Wales, Honorary Executive Director of the St Mary’s Research Centre in Wales, and an Anglican priest in the Church in Wales. Until recently, Tania held the position of Associate Professor in Education and the Social Significance of Religion at the University of Warwick. The conversation between research and practice is of particular interest to her. Her research publications include studies relevant to a range of issues concerning Church and School and she has also created a number of original curriculum resources supporting religious education in schools. Tania is an active member of national professional bodies in Wales supporting statutory religious education.
Dr Werner Haussmann
Board member
Werner is a researcher and senior lecturer in religious education at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. After his university studies he worked in schools for several years and at a centre for advanced training of the Lutheran Church of Bavaria.
Werner’s work is situated in the context of several organizations in the field of RE and interreligious dialogue: Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Religionspädagogik (GwR), International Seminar on Religions and Values (ISREV), Religions for Peace (RfP). Finally, he is Deputy Director of the Research Unit for Public Religion and Education (RUPRE) at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg.
His main interests lie in the field of public theology and public religious education as well as in the fields of interreligious education and European developments of the relation between religion(s) and school(s).