Liora Bresler

Liora Bresler is a Professor Emerita at the College of Education, University of Illinois, Champaign, as well as the College of Fine and Applied Art; the Hedda Anderson Emerita Chair in Lund University, Sweden; and since 2007, a Professor II at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway. Her areas of interest are qualitative research methodologies (including case-study, narrative and aesthetic-based inquiry); intellectual educational entrepreneurship in academia; and arts education curricula in formal and informal settings. Her current work focuses on qualitative research as aesthetic experience integrating mind, body, and spirit.

Bresler has published 150 papers and book chapters and has edited 17 special issues in such journals as Research Studies in Music Education, Educational Theory, Council of Research in Music Education, Visual Art Research, Visual Inquiry, and Arts Education Policy Review where she was the editor for international issues. She has authored and edited books on the arts in education, including Knowing Bodies, Moving Minds (Kluwer, 2004); the Internationa Handbook of Research in Arts Education (2007, Springer), the co-edited International research in education: Experience, theory and practice (2002, Peter Lang), the International Handbook of Creative Learning (Routledge, 2011); and The International Handbook of the Arts in Education (Routledge, 2015).

Bresler is the editor of the book series “Landscapes: Aesthetics, the arts and education” (Springer) and the co-founder (1999) of the International Journal of Education and the Arts. She has given keynote speeches, invited talks, seminars and short courses in thirty some countries in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and the Americas. Her work was translated into German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, Lithuanian, Finnish, Korean, and Chinese.

Teaching awards at the University of Illinois include the Distinguished Teaching Life-Long Career Award at the College of Education (2004), the University of Illinois Campus Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching (2005), and the University of Illinois Campus Award for Excellence in Mentoring (2018). Other awards include Distinguished Senior Scholar at the College of Education, University of Illinois (2014); Distinguished Fellow in the National Art Education Association (2010); the Edwin Ziegfeld Award for distinguished international leadership in art education by the United States Society for Education Through Art (2007); and The Lin Wright Special Recognition Award by The American Alliance for Theatre and Education (2007).