Carmen Dalli is Professor at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her research on early childhood teacher professionalism and pedagogy with under-threes has been internationally influential. She chaired the Ministerial Advisory group that developed the NZ Early Learning Action Plan (2019-2029) and has contributed to policy development in a number of jurisdictions.

Heidi Harju-Luukkainen is a Professor of Education at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland), the Vice Director for the Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius and the Director of Education, a Professor at Nord University in Norway, and an Adjunct Professor at Southern Cross University in Australia. She has an extensive publication record with around 300 scholarly works, is frequently a keynote speaker, has been involved in more than 40 research and developmental projects spanning Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and North America, and has secured more than 14.5 million euros in total grants. Her research areas are early childhood education, multilingualism, international large-scale assessments, special education, among others.

Professor Hillevi Lenz Taguchi is a Professor of child and youth studies and early childhood education at Stockholm University. She has experience of critical, feminist and gender-pedagogies, feminist activist work in higher education and early childhood education practices since the mid-1990s. The last 15 years, her interest has been in the theoretical developments and transgressive methodologies as part of Posthumanist, Feminist New Materialist and Post Qualitative approaches. She has led a large intervention-study with over 400 preschool children and 90 educators. Currently she is focusing on the possibilities of onto-epistemological, emergent and transdisciplinary work underpinned by ontological relationality.

Iram Siraj (PhD, OBE, FAcSS, FLSW, FRSA) is Professor of Child Development and Education at the University of Oxford and Distinguished Research Professor at the universities of Maynooth in Ireland and Melbourne in Australia. She has led on longitudinal studies, including Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years (REPEY) study, which first developed the concept of Sustained Shared Thinking (SST). She is the co-author of several complementary scales that measure pedagogical quality in settings with young children – the MOVERS (2024), the SSTEW (2024), ECQRS-EC (2025) and the latest PLEY (on pedagogical leadership) scales (2025) by Routledge.

Director Emerita, Marcy Whitebook leads ECHOES, a project connecting early care and education today with its history and activism for a more equitable system. Marcy began as an infant/toddler and preschool teacher, and by participating in a teacher-led compensation movement that culminated in the nationwide Worthy Wage Campaign. Marcy is internationally known for her workforce research and her unwavering efforts to ensure dignity for educators, children, and families participating in the ECE system. Prior to founding and leading CSCCE, Marcy founded the Washington-based Center for the Child Care Workforce (CCW), beginning as the Child Care Employee Project. She earned a Master’s Degree from UC Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Developmental Studies from the UCLA Graduate School of Education.

Dr Laura K. Doan is a professor of early childhood education in the School of Education at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC, Canada. Laura’s research focus has been on the needs and experiences of beginning early childhood educators. Laura is the founder of the Peer Mentoring Program for Early Childhood Educators in BC, a province-wide program.