Catch up on our Palestine Webinar


Last week, IDEA hosted the second webinar from our 2025 series, ‘Exploring Contemporary Crises and Issues through Global Citizenship Education, ' focusing on Palestine.   


If you missed out, you can watch the full video below! 


The webinar had voices from Northern Ireland, Palestine, academic researchers and teachers offering powerful perspectives and practical supports for educators. 


We examined our responsibilities as educators when we discuss conflict-related violence and displacement? What approaches can we use to do this? 


A native of Belfast, Brendan Ciarán Browne, PhD, FTCD is Assistant Professor of Conflict Resolution, and a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin opened the webinar with a passionate input. He has spent much of his professional career working in Palestine or focused on the Palestinian struggle, anticolonialism and resistance. 


“As educators we must be continuously educating ourselves, understanding and be truly committed. The cause of liberation of Palestine required you to be up-to-date not only on the foundational work... but the swathes of materials being produced by our colleagues in Palestine, [who] are being erased off the face of the earth. You have to be committed to do the educational work yourself.” 


“You have to unashamedly declare your position as being against anti-Palestinian racism. As being for Palestinian determination and resistance. If you can’t make that commitment, then you don’t have a right to occupy the space to talk about Palestine. Many people have vulnerabilities that undermine their ability to do this. If you have those vulnerabilities, we are sympathetic but if that is the case- vacate the space.”  


“Let’s own our language. Let’s be bold and determined to call Zionism what it is.” 


Watch his full input below!

Bana Abu Zuluf  is a Palestinian educator and interdisciplinary PhD researcher in International Law in the School of Law and Criminology in Maynooth, Ireland. Bana focused on demystifying Palestine 


“I know people are keeping an eye on what’s happening in Gaza but they are not understanding it in the broader light of Zionism and its project in Palestine. There is a danger tendency to complicate what’s going on in Palestine. In fact, it’s quite simple.”  


“Looking at settler colonialism and the displacement of Palestinians... it’s very important not to focus on certain events but to focus on it as a structure. I think educators need to focus on it has a structure. And when speaking about genocide they need to relate to it as a part of colonial erasure.” 


“I want educators to go deeper and look into Zionism as a settler colonial ideology. The issue here is that the people see Israel, Zionism, and settler colonialism. They don’t really merge those together.” 


Check out her full input below!

Andrew Phelan, co-founder of Teachers for Palestine offered more practical insights from his perspective as a Post-Primary Physical Education teacher, currently teaching in a school in Dublin and how Teachers for Palestine began. He gave a fast paced tour of all the ways which teachers can educate about Palestine. 


“We noticed... you can’t do that fundraiser here, or you can’t teach about that history in your class. You can’t bring in a speaker from Palestine here. You can’t do those things. Because it’s too political is what Principals were saying. This is not coming from the Department of Education.... because some Principals were doing it and doing a fantastic job.” 


“We started to look at all the different subjects, and it’s very important to see there’s lots of different avenues in our curriculum. There are loads and loads of opportunities and there’s actually no excuse for us not to teach it.”  


Andrew took participants through the Let’s Talk About Palestine resources for educators LetsTalkAboutPalestine “You don’t have to go to your Principal. You can just teach your subject using the curriculum and using Palestine as your lense. There’s really no excuse there.”   


You can watch Andrew's input in a video below!

Finally, Aline Batarseh, Executive Director of Visualizing Palestine. Aline is a Palestine from occupied Jerusalem, based in the US. Aline talked about Visualizing Palestine and their approach using data and research to visually communicate Palestinian experiences and provoke a change of traditional narratives. She also spoke about how educators can practically use the resources when you are educating about Palestine. 


“We have to address what’s happening in Palestine as a whole rather than as a fragment. This is a challenge when we talk about Gaza. The Israeli genocide in Gaza is not an isolated incident and it is our responsibility to place it in historical context. During the Nakba commemoration in 2024 we produced this visual to really show this ongoing Nakba, this ongoing expulsion, ongoing destruction of homes of villages of people’s lives, ongoing massacres, ongoing colinisation and Zionist idealogy.  


See Aline's input below!




October 8, 2025
We are looking for a consultant to design an interactive data visualisation tool for our Theory of Impact for Global Citizenship Education in Ireland. The consultant will lead the design or tailoring of off-the-shelf survey software and analytics software to our needs, in collaboration with IDEA staff. Please submit a tender including a description of stages in the development process, number of days, expected fee, and experience of relevant personnel for the work to be carried out to anya@ideaonline.ie . The deadline for application is Wednesday, 29 October, 5.00pm. Read the full terms of reference here.
October 6, 2025
After three remarkable years with IDEA, we are sad to share that Anya Sparynska is moving abroad to begin a new adventure. During her time with us, Anya made an indelible mark - first by shaping a pioneering programme role, and later by guiding us in a capacity development role that strengthened our impact across Ireland’s development education sector. From designing and implementing innovative initiatives to building partnerships and capacity across our member organisations, Anya has left IDEA stronger, more connected, and more ambitious for the future. “I am sad to leave at such a pivotal time in IDEA: we are faced with unspeakable horror, as the need for justice and accountability grows ever more urgent. I have seen, however, our members and staff respond with creativity, humanity and dedication to these challenging times and find inspiration in it, even at this darkest hour. A desire to be close to my family and the pressure of the housing crisis have driven me to Brussels, but I know I will be back as Ireland - it’s passionate, brave and kind people - now feels like home. I will be sure to follow IDEA and our members’ work closely in the coming year and hope to stay in touch! “Working at IDEA has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. Seeing ideas and passion turn into real impact and change has been incredibly fulfilling - I’ll carry those lessons, and the very special friendships made along the way with me always.”
September 26, 2025
Date: Tuesday, 04 November, from 3.30–4.30pm Location: Online via Zoom IDEA is thrilled to invite members to the online launch of our new “Theory of Impact for Global Citizenship Education” on Tuesday, 04 November, from 3.30–4.30pm, Online via Zoom. During this session, we will present the model, share insights into the process behind its development, and explore how it will be used to strengthen impact across the sector. We will also introduce a new tool in progress, an interactive data visualisation map designed to showcase our collective impact as a network. For many years, IDEA and its members have been grappling with the concept of impact in Development Education/Global Citizenship Education (GCE). As GCE practitioners, tracking impact helps us to identify how, where and with whom our work is creating positive change, as well as investigating areas in which our impact could be stronger. Furthermore, we can also benefit from examining the collective impact of GCE carried out by the wide-ranging work of IDEA members, and from exploring how these impacts contribute to the major social changes to which the GCE community aspires. Driven therefore by the need to understand how projects and programmes are collectively “making a difference” in IDEA we looked at models that could help us visualise and capture GCE “impact networks”. We formulated our vision of impact and then a theory of how we expect this desired impact to be achieved to allow us to map our activities and collect data to corroborate that theory. This Theory of Impact model is how we hope to illustrate this complex GCE impact network. Building on work done by IDEA over many years including building sectoral capacity in using Results Frameworks for GCE, our Quality & Impact working group, engagement with Irish Aid on their Performance Measurement Framework (PMF), and the successful roll-out of a Code of Good Practice for DE/GCE, this Theory of Impact represent the next stage of our effort to ‘develop a consistent approach to measuring impact among the sector’. We are therefore thrilled to invite you to the presentation of our ‘Theory of Impact for GCE’. At this online presentation, we will tell you about the process that led to the creation of this model, how it will be used and what we hope it could bring to the sector. We will also touch on a new tool being developed based on the model, which should allow the creation of an interactive data visualisation map of our collective impact as a network. Join us as we launch into this exciting new phase of our Impact Measurement work. Join us as we begin this exciting new phase of our Impact Measurement work. Register below!