Shamini Dias, PhD, For Deeper Learning Board member, is the Director of Transdisciplinary Curriculum and Special Projects with the Transdisciplinary Program at Claremont Graduate University (CGU). Shamini Dias also is the Program Director of the Masters in Transdisciplinary Analysis at CGU.
Shamini Dias is an alumna of Claremont Graduate University with a PhD in Education. Her first two degrees were in Linguistics and English Literature from the National University of Singapore, where she was introduced to complexity and chaos theory, feminist and post-colonial thought, and post-human philosophy. Shamini worked as a Junior College teacher with the Ministry of Education in Singapore as well as for the Open University UK. Shamini Dias’ work as educator and teaching artist with learners, teachers, and leaders from Pre-K through college, and with museums, community, and corporate contexts has informed her scholarship and practice as a transdisciplinary scholar and boundary crosser.
Shamini Dias focuses on justice-oriented positive futures through education and leadership. She integrates ideas from storytelling and theatre, literature, semiotics, leadership, and sciences with a focus on imagination as a much needed creative, adaptive capacity.
Shamini Dias founded and developed Claremont Graduate University’s unique Preparing Future Faculty program (now part of the Center for Academic and Faculty Excellence) based on transdisciplinary principles that center joy, inclusion, and equity-minded principles for transformative education that puts learning and learners first. She continues this line of development in Transdisciplinary Studies, building curricula that expand transdisciplinary education as a co-creative process that prepares people to flourish in emergent and unpredictable contexts. Shamini Dias is also the Editor of the STEAM Journal, a transdisciplinary, open-access journal, for boundary-crossing conversations and arts-science integration.