Prof. Deborah Britzman, Faculty of Education was recently awarded the James and Helen Merritt Distinguished Speaker Award for Philosophy of Education, given by the College of Education of Northern Illinois University (NIU).
“This award is unique in North America for recognizing significant and sustained contributions in the field of philosophy of education,” said Prof. Wilma Miranda, department Chair of educational psychology and foundations at NIU.
The award was established about 15 years ago in honour of James Merritt, a now retired professor of philosophy at NIU. Britzman’s work on the implications of psychoanalytic inquiry for education attracted the attention of the committee, which selected her from a pool of potential awardees in the education field, and invited her for a seminar presentation and award ceremony. She gave her lecture, “Melaine Klein, Little Richard, and the Psychoanalytic Question of Inhibition”, in late March at NIU in DeKalb, Illinois.
Britzman is also graduate program director of the Social and Political Thought Program in York’s Faculty of Graduate Studies.