Sawaros (Sam) Thanapornsangsuth is a JSPS-UNU Postdoctoral Fellow at UNU-IAS.
Her research interests explore how education can be a foundational tool for sustainable development. Her goal is to study and promote a lifelong and innovative learning process that enables people to develop the knowledge, values, and skills — individually and collectively, locally and globally — that will improve their quality of life now without damaging the planet.
Driven by this goal, Sam has extensive fieldwork experience in informal learning settings, both in the United States and abroad. Born and raised in Thailand, she has worked with multiple schools from low-income Thai communities to engage students and teachers in community-driven project-based learning experiences. Her previous work addressed equity issues in several educational areas, including environment, STEM, and computational literacy. In addition, she led various high-impact international education technology projects granted by UNESCO, Office of the Education Council (Thailand), and National Science Foundation (USA).
Before joining the UNU-IAS, Sam was a tenure-track lecturer at the Department of Education Policy, Management and Leadership, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. She graduated with a Doctor of Education degree from the Communication, Media, and Learning Technologies Design Program at Columbia University (USA).
Research Interests
- Education and e-learning
- Education for sustainable development
- Information and communication technologies for development
- Innovation and new technology
