Shamini Dias is the Director of Transdisciplinary Curriculum and Special Projects with the Transdisciplinary Program at CGU. She is also the Program Director of the Masters in Transdisciplinary Analysis.
Shamini is an alumna of CGU and holds 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. Her 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 focuses on justice-oriented positive futures through education and leadership for flourishing. She integrates ideas from complexity science, storytelling and theatre, literature, semiotics, leadership, and learning sciences with a focus on imagination as a much needed creative, adaptive capacity in a post-normal world.
Shamini founded and developed CGU’s unique Preparing Future Faculty program (now integrated with the Center for Academic and Faculty Excellence – CAFE) 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 is also the Editor of The STEAM Journal, a transdisciplinary open-access journal for boundary-crossing conversations and arts-science integration.