Prof Scherto Gill, DPhil

Scherto has background in social research and has conducted many investigations in diverse areas such as educational innovation, intercultural experiences, peacebuilding in post-conflict societies, collective healing, communal well-being, good governance, and social transformation.

In particular, Scherto is interested in exploring research as relational practices and futures-forming processes. To this end, she has experiences in life history studies, narrative inquiries, participatory and collaborative research, action-based research and mixed-methods research. Amongst Scherto’s research portfolio is community-based co-creative projects directed at intergenerational dialogue and inquiry for collective healing, peace and well-being. For this reason, she is the coordinator of the UNESCO Collective Healing Initiative. 

Parallel to her research interests, Scherto also directs her inquiry towards normative questions such as “What ought to be the aims of education?”; “What constitutes human well-being?”; “What is the interconnection between positive peace and human well-being?”, “How should we understand love?”; and “What kind of political system can enhance our collective well-being?”, and so forth. In collaboration with colleagues, she has published a number of books that articulate initial responses to these questions, including Human-Centred Education (Routledge), Happiness, Flourishing and the Good Life: A Transformative Framework for Human Well-Being (Routledge), Understanding Peace Holistically (Peter Lang), Lest We Lose Love(Anthem Press), Why Love Matters: Values in Governance (Peter Lang), and Beyond Instrumentalised Politics(DeGruyter). 

As part of her work, Scherto also co-convenes forums, symposiums, webinars, and other research events. These are spaces for exploring good questions key to transforming our understanding of structural peace, and human’s co-flourishing with nature. These dialogue events can enrich our collective policy decisions.  

• Life Fellow, Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA)
• Editorial Board, Journal of Studies in Spirituality
• Editorial Board, Journal of Dialogue Studies
• Board Member, Rising Global Peace Forum
• Board Member, Spirit of Humanity Forum

As a Researcher, Scherto’s interests centre on understanding positive peace, ecology of well-being, and human flourishing as holistic and dynamic processes. Currently, she is working on a few commissioned research projects include (1) UNESCO Intergenerational Dialogue & Inquiry and Collective Healing Circles in global communities to explore how they might have impact on communal well-being; (2) a survey with global youth to seek their perspectives on youth leadership and to co-create a UNESCO future leaders programme; (3) an interdisciplinary investigation to understand what socio-economic and institutional conditions can support loving and caring connections amongst people. 

Scherto is also developing a series of books that moves beyond the well-rehearsed critiques of public governance. It aims to explore constructive and promising orientations to democracy that are conceptually robust, practically demonstrable, and institutionally viable. It seeks to re-define public governance as social spaces and processes for facilitating and coordinating consensus-building and collaborative decision-making. Such spaces and processes will require relevant institutions to engage peoples and communities respectfully, facilitate dialogue and deliberation peacefully, and attend to diverse voices equally. 

To this end, Scherto is working with researchers and authors to bring forward books from different domains and disciplines.