Educating for Peace - A Conversation with Dr Nandini Chatterjee Singh

Dr. Nandini Chatterjee Singh is a cognitive neuroscientist and currently Senior Project Officer at UNESCO MGIEP (Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development), in New Delhi, India. UNESCO MGIEP focuses on achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 towards education for building peaceful and sustainable societies across the world by developing programmes that promote social and emotional learning, innovate digital pedagogies and empower the youth. Their mission is to 'build kinder brains.'

After receiving a PhD in physics from the University of Pune in India, Nandini studied auditory learning mechanisms in songbirds at University of California Berkeley. She returned to India in 2002 and the first cognitive and neuroimaging laboratory in India at the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC) in India, where she set up SALLY (Speech and Language Laboratory). Using behavioral and functional neuroimaging experiments, her laboratory sought to understand neurodiversity especially children with autism and dyslexia. Her research laboratory at NBRC also conducted research on how Indian ragas elicit distinct emotions.

Since 2017, Nandini has been at UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) where she has led the development of EMC², a neuroscience-based framework that builds SEL competencies of Empathy(E), Mindfulness (M), Compassion (C) and Critical Inquiry (C). She is focused on designing new interactive curricula using innovative digital pedagogies like digital games, digital dialogue to cultivate SEL and she conducts cross-cultural research to assess their efficacy in school education systems.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @nandini-chatterjee-singh

Twitter: @nanchatter; @UNESCO_MGIEP