Laurie Anderson

Areas of interest

Laurie’s interest in how contemplative perspectives and practises provide opportunities for personal and professional transformation was the catalyst to co-develop SFU’s MEd in Contemplative Inquiry and Approaches to Education with Dr Heesoon Bai in 2014. Laurie has taught several of the core courses, and co-writes articles on contemplative inquiry and its impact on teaching, learning and leadership. Laurie’s other scholarly interests are school reform, the role of school culture, leadership in education broadly, and specifically the role imagination plays in both leadership and pedagogy. On the latter area of inquiry, Laurie contributed the concluding chapter to Cultivating Imagination in Leadership (G. Judson and Dougherty, Eds, Teachers College Press, 2023).

Biography

Laurie Anderson, PhD
Laurie has been the Executive Director of SFU Vancouver since 2010, an Adjunct Professor in SFU’s Faculty of Education since 2014, and the acting Executive Director of SFU’s Centre for Dialogue from March, 2022 until August 2023. Previously, Laurie spent 30 years in the K-12 system in Coquitlam and Vancouver, serving in every educational role for teacher to superintendent. Laurie’s work in leadership development and school reform has taken him from Penticton to Phnom Penh, from Kowloon to Kelowna, and from Surrey to Santiago. Laurie is a denizen of SFU, having completed his BEd, PDP, MA and PhD there.