Louise Chawla

"Historians call cities the cradles of civilization. What kind of cradles are the cities of today for the children and youth who grow up in them, who will determine the form of our cities and our societies in the future? Through the voices of children, this is the question that Growing Up in Cities explores."

Dr. Louise Chawla is the International Co-ordinator of the Unesco-MOST Growing up in Cities program. It was during the Monte Verita Colloquium on "Children and the City" in Ascona, Switzerland in October 1994 that she envisaged a replication and extension of an earlier project of the same name that was part of UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme in the 1970s. At the time, she was a Fulbright Scholar at the Children and Environment Program of the Norwegian Center for Child Research (NOSEB). Prior to this she was the President of the Kentucky Association for Environmental Education (1992-93).

Dr. Chawla holds an M.A. in Education and Child Development from Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology from the City University of New York. She is an Associate Professor at Whitney Young College, an interdisciplinary honors program in Kentucky State University, Frankfort, Kentucky, and an Adjunct Professor in the Doctoral Program in Environmental Studies, Antioch New England Graduate School, Keene, New Hampshire.

She has published widely on topics concerning the development of environmental concern and responsibility, cultural interpretations of nature, and children and the environment. She authored: In the First Country of Places: Nature, Poetry and Childhood Memory (State University of New York, 1994) and is the editor of Growing Up in an Urbanizing World (Earthscan Publications, in press), a publication for which she also prepared the critical introductory and concluding chapters.

Dr. Chawla has worked tirelessly to support the rights of children through her research and participatory projects. Due to her life-long commitment to children’s rights she has become a eminent figure in the multi-disciplinary field of children's environments, a mentor for those who work with her, and an advocate worldwide for listening to the voices of children and ensuring their participation in creating a better world. In 1997, her commitment and expertise was recognized by the North American Association for Environmental Education, through the Outstanding Contribution to Research Award.