Global Character Alliance Newsletter
August 2026
Conferences and Events
Fourth Series of the Flourishing Student Webinar
Co-hosted by The Jubilee Centre and Wake Forest University, The Flourishing Student international webinar series features presentations on the role of universities to help their students to cultivate the character and attributes required for human flourishing. After the success of the first three series, in this fourth series, we are delighted to host more world leading universities renowned for their focus on character education, to share their knowledge and expertise. The series starts with a panel webinar where we revisit the universities we heard from in Series One. Invitations will be sent to everyone who has registered for the Global Character Alliance newsletter. Please share the link with colleagues who may be interested in attending the online webinar series.
Promoting Harmony through Character Education: Asian and International Perspectives
SCCCE is delighted to bring together researchers, educators, practitioners and organisational leaders from Singapore and around the world to explore how education can contribute to harmony, flourishing and social cohesion across diverse cultural and community contexts. Through the broad lens of character education, the presentations will examine philosophical perspectives, empirical research and educational practices relating to flourishing, social cohesion, and community action.
International Conference on Leadership and Character
The 3rd International Congress on Leadership Education, Leadership and Character, will take place from 2nd – 4th December 2026 in Puebla, Mexico. Organised by Anáhuac University Puebla and the Regnum Christi International Network of Universities, and co-organised by UFV’s Centre for Leadership and the Virtues and Values Education Centre, the congress will feature keynote speakers Kristján Kristjánsson, Mary Crossan, Toby Newstead and Jorge López. The deadline for proposals will be on the 2nd October 2026.
Centre to Host 2nd Africa Regional Conference in Nairobi, Kenya
The Centre for Character and Leadership in collaboration with like-minded partners will host the 2nd Africa Regional Conference from 26th – 28th August 2026 in Nairobi, Kenya. Guided by the theme ‘Cultivating Virtues for Leadership Among Educational Leaders in Colleges and Universities’, the conference will bring together researchers, practitioners, educators, and policy makers to reflect on how to intentionally promote the cultivation of virtues and character strengths in contemporary educational contexts.
Pentecost University Launches Centre for Youth Research and Development
Pentecost University will commence the Centre for Youth Research and Development (CYRD) in September 2026, a pioneering hub dedicated to advancing youth research, character and virtue development, citizenship education, and youth empowerment. The Centre will undertake empirical research, evidence-based training, policy engagement, advocacy, and needs-based empowerment programmes to address emerging youth challenges. As a timely intervention in Ghana, the Centre will complement and strengthen youth research, character development, and evidence-based youth development initiatives across Africa.
Values-based Education Annual Conference 2026, Puckrup Hall Tewkesbury
Come and join us to find out about ‘A Day in the Life of a Values-based School!’. Take away ideas to use straight away. Values-based practitioners and experts will take us through the best experiences you could expect from this practice. From assemblies to classroom lessons, playtimes and going home time – we will share the best pedagogy and practice, celebrating outstanding practice in this field. Come and be inspired!
Dominican Republic’s International Character Education Week
PULSORIA’s International Character Education Week, founded and directed by Ángela Español, is an international initiative developed in collaboration with Dandelion – Centre for Character and Leadership and the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria, with the support of the Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña (UNPHU) as the host university in the Dominican Republic. The Week will bring together educators, universities, researchers, policymakers, families, and civil society to advance a shared vision for character education through lectures, workshops, and dialogue with leading international experts, promoting human flourishing, ethical leadership, and the formation of character as essential foundations for education in the 21st century.
Conference - Beyond the Prompt: Character Leadership in Times of AI-Driven Change
Save the Date! Hosted by the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership, Ivey Business School, this Toronto-based conference on 18th November will explore how character leadership can make our organizations more (not less) human by using AI: what to delegate, what to remain human-driven, and how teams can work more efficiently and creatively without losing agency or judgment. Every one of those is a character decision before it is a technology one.
Jubilee Centre Partners on Fourth ECVA Conference
The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues co-hosted the fourth annual European Character and Virtue Association (ECVA) Conference at Trnava University, Slovakia, from 24th – 26th June 2026. The conference brought together more than 100 researchers from over 40 universities across 20 countries and explored the theme Bridging the Knowledge–Action Gap in Character Development. The event showcased the latest international research and strengthened collaboration to advance character education, virtue research and educational practice across Europe and beyond and featured a keynote by Professor James Arthur.
Publications and Resources
New Journal: Call for Submissions
The Annual Review of Virtue and the Professions is an international, refereed, open-access journal published by Virtues & Vocations at the University of Notre Dame that focuses on cutting-edge interdisciplinary scholarship on integrating character into professional and pre-professional education. Submissions for the first issue, “The Character of Pre-Professional Education,” are due in September.
Repair Work is Central to the Work of Character
Aaron D. Cobb and Emily Hunt-Hinojosa reflect on the influence moral repair has on individuals’ and communities’ ability to build character. Drawing on Margaret Urban Walker’s scholarship, Bryan Stevenson’s reflections on confession and redemption, and examples from institutions like Fort Lewis College and Brandeis University, the two scholars explore what it means for campus communities to reckon with fractures between faculty, staff, and students, and between “town and gown”.
Values-Based Leadership in Public Discourse: How University Leaders Frame Character and Commitment
A new publication in the Journal of Values-Based Leadership uses the KNN Framework for Flourishing as a lens for understanding leadership communication as ethical positioning. Analyzing published quotations from U.S. university leaders during the first hundred days of the second Trump administration reveals a civic-framing gap: Leaders committed to civic-oriented ends yet predominantly reached for moral and intellectual virtue language while civic virtues and caring qualities were muted by comparison.
Imagining a Common Good Character Model that Centers the Social
Baylor University’s Andrew Hogue and the ECI’s Emily Hunt-Hinojosa share learnings from the Common Good Character Trust. Through the group’s discussions, they discovered that “character-building efforts that aim at the common good need a model of character formation that accounts more fully for institutions, cultures, and broader social forces.
Life is Research
Based on 30 years of reflection and researching, the book Life is Research by Vishalache Balakrishnan has been recently published and will be launched on 15th August 2026 at the Universiti Malaya, Malaysia. This book is all about continuous learning, active participation, resilience through failure and self discovery. The book will also be available in Malay, Chinese and Tamil soon.
Forming Genuine Courage is not an Individual Project
In the first instalment of a new series, Aaron D. Cobb, ECI’s Director of Collective Learning, invites us to consider whether courage is a virtue we can develop on our own. Practicing by ourselves is not enough. We need guides: people who can help shape how we learn and show us what good practice looks like.
Other News
Character.org Announces 2026 Laws of Life Essay Contest Winners
This year’s winning essays were selected from an international field of submissions and represent a wide range of voices, ages, schools, and countries. “The strongest essays did more than define a value. They told a story, revealed growth, and helped readers think more deeply about their own lives,” said Dr. Emilie Johnson, Director of the Laws of Life Essay Contest.
Ivey Business School, Western University, Canada Taking Applications for Tenured Faculty Position in Organizational Behaviour
We are accepting applications for a tenured faculty position in Organizational Behaviour that will serve as the inaugural Chair in Leader Character within the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership. The Chair’s mandate is to help build a global leadership ecosystem on leader character spanning research, teaching, and practice, establishing the Institute as an important hub of a network of strategic partnerships in Canada and around the world.
Online Spanish Specialist Programme in Character Education – Second Edition
The Virtue and Values Education Centre at Universidad Francisco de Vitoria (Madrid), in collaboration with the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham, is launching the second edition of its 100% online Specialist Programme in Character Education in September 2026. This one-year, Spanish-language programme combines research, international expertise and practical application, equipping educators and school leaders to embed character and virtues across teaching, curriculum and school culture.
Registration is now open.
Leader Character Practitioner Certification Program
The LCPCP offers an accessible deep dive into the Institute’s groundbreaking research, equipping you to become a subject matter expert. Delivered virtually over 13 days using a train-the-trainer approach, three modules build your capacity to raise awareness of leader character, assess and develop it in individuals, teams, and organizations, and embed it in organizational practices—providing research grounding, practical roadmaps, and resources.
Centre Hosts Virtual Coaching and Mentorship Speaker Series to Empower School Leaders
The Centre for Character and Leadership hosted the virtual Coaching and Mentorship Speaker Series to empower a cohort of school leaders on Cultivating Virtues for Leadership. The sessions were held on 25th June and 23rd July 2026. The main topics were titled ‘Creating a Culture Where Everyone Grows: Every Educator is a Chief Empathy Officer’ presented by Dr. Thomas Hoerr; and the “Jubilee Centre Framework for Character Education in Schools” presented by Professor Andrew Peterson.
Early Years Nigeria Initiative Presented During Association for Moral Education Annual Conference, Spain
From 12th – 14th June 2026, Dr Katrina Korb from the Early Years Nigeria attended the 52nd annual conference of the Association for Moral Education which was held in Madrid, Spain. Dr. Katrina presented a poster on Tarbiyya (a culturally relevant character education curriculum) at Practitioners Day and a paper on the design process for adapting indigenous learning activities into an effective curriculum.
Two Founding Members of the Chilean Network Present at AME 2026
Two founding members of the Chilean Network for Character Education presented their work at the 52nd Association for Moral Education Conference in Madrid. Joaquín León-Parodi, academic at Universidad de los Andes, presented ‘Harmony in the Education of Moral Virtues: An Aristotelian-Thomistic Approach,’ examining the integral relationship among moral virtues. Francisco Moller, Director of the UNIR Character Project (UCP), presented POTENCIA during the Programs & Practice Day, sharing lessons from three years of implementing the character education programme in Chile.
Study on Faculty and Staff Views on Character Education
Participate in a research study about character education! The study examines how faculty and staff in higher education think about intentional efforts to support the development of students’ character. Participation should take about 10 minutes. If you have questions, please contact Michael Prinzing (prinzim@wfu.edu). This study has been reviewed by the Institutional Review Board at Wake Forest University (#00026437).