Jason Nunzio Dorio

Associate Director, Undergraduate Programs for Community Engagement

Jason Nunzio Dorio, Ph.D., is the Associate Director of Undergraduate Programs for Community Engagement in the Department of Education at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. Dr. Dorio teaches and develops courses, mentor students, collaborates with faculty, and fosters and sustains community partnerships all to support the community engagement requirement for the Education and Social Transformation undergraduate major. He also teaches courses on community education, qualitative education research, global citizenship education, and has taught graduate education research courses at UCLA.

The tapestry that makes up Dr. Dorio’s versatile research and teaching interests is textured by pedagogical, theoretical, and epistemological orientations grounded in critical/anti-oppressive theories/pedagogies and post/de-colonial paradigms and criticisms that seek to unveil and disrupt inequities, power dynamics and hierarchies necessary to reimagine education and society for social and global justice. This tapestry is shaded by qualitative research methodologies such as ethnography, community-based/participatory action-research, discourse analysis, and hermeneutic phenomenology. There are also four main threads woven to create the patterns of Dr. Dorio’s research tapestry:

The first thread of this research tapestry examines the relationship between constructions of citizenship/citizenship education and oppressive/liberatory approaches, and their local, national and global configurations including global citizenship education. The second thread observes knowledge, learning, and social action generated out nonformal education, community engagement, adult education, activism and social movements. The third thread focuses on internationalization of higher education related to teaching/teacher education, curriculum and learning, and management, which embeds critical global learning and community engagement, global citizenship education, the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, and understanding how critical internationalization efforts can better serve historically marginalized students and communities. The final thread centers on amplifying the educational and social experiences of immigrant, international, undocumented, and refugee students and communities and transformative education that serves these groups. This tapestry is furthered colored by Dr. Dorio’s gravitations towards the geographical areas, histories, cultures, languages, and cuisines of North Africa, West Asia and Southern Europe (Middle East and Mediterranean regions), Mexico, and the United States.

Dr. Dorio is currently on the Editorial Board for the Teaching in Higher Education journal. He is a former Visiting Scholar with the Graduate School of Education at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. He is also an Honorary Founder of the Paulo Freire Institute-UCLA; served as the Assistant to the President of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies; is a former Director of Academic Programs for the UNESCO-UCLA Chair in Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education; and former Co-Chair of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Middle East Special Interest Group. Dr. Dorio has also taught and developed curriculum for California State University, Long Beach, and Georgetown University.

Departments

Department of Education

Programs

Education and Social Transformation Major

Areas of Expertise and Advising Interests

Research Centers

Education

Ph.D., Education-Social Sciences and Comparative Education, UCLA
M.A., Education-Social and Multicultural Foundations, California State University, Long Beach
Teaching Credential, California Single Subject, Social Science and Secondary Education, California State University, Long Beach
B.A., History, California State University, Long Beach
A.A., Liberal Arts, Los Angeles Harbor College

Awards, Honors and Fellowships

University-Community Links (UC Links) Pilot Grant; UCLA Center for Community Engagement: Community-Engaged Course Development Grant; UCLA Online Teaching & Learning: Online Course Design Summer Award; UCLA NSF Non-Senate Faculty Professional Development Award
2014-2015: Visiting Scholar, Graduate School of Education, American University in Cairo
2012: Leigh Burstein Award
2012: Elwood H. Zillgitt & Mildred B. Finney Fellowship

Select Publications

Liboon, C. A., Ayik, B., & Dorio, J.N. (in Press 2026). A Review of STEM Community Praxis: Towards Social Justice Based Program Evaluation in Education. In Community Engaged Praxis in Peace, Social Justice, and Human Rights Education: Partnering for Transformative Change. Teachers College Press.
Torres, C.A. and Dorio, J.N. (2023). Sustainable Development Education: The Responsibilities of Teaching Training Institutions. Global Commons Review, Volume 3, 9-14.
Pojar, A., Hou, Y., & Dorio, J.N. (2022). Global Citizenship Education to Disrupt Neo-Nationalism. In R. Desjardins and S. Wiksten (Eds.) The Handbook of Civic Engagement and Education. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Dorio, J.N., Pojar, A., & Hou, Y. (2021). The University and the Crisis of Twenty-First Century Citizenship: Towards A Global Citizenship Education To Disrupt Populist Nationalism. Citizenship Teaching & Learning, 16(3), 301-322.
Dorio, J.N., Abdou, E.D., & Moheyeldine, N. (Eds.) (2019). The Struggle for Citizenship Education in Egypt: (Re)Imagining Subjects and Citizens. New York: Routledge.
Dorio, J. N. (2018). Lessons From Los Angeles: Self-Study On Teaching University Global Citizenship Education To Challenge Authoritarian Education, Neoliberal Globalization And Nationalist Populism. Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education, 6(1), 208-234.
Dorio, J.N. (2017). The Revolution as a critical pedagogical workshop: Perceptions of university students reimagining participatory citizenship(s) in Egypt. In Nagwa Megahed (Ed.) Education During the Time of the Revolution in Egypt: Dialectics of Education in Conflict. Comparative and International Education: A Diversity of Voices Book Series (pp. 11-36). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Dorio, J.N. (2017). Pedagogy of Transition: Understanding university student movements in post-2011 Egypt. In Rowhea Elmesky, Carol Camp-Yeakey, Olivia Marcucci (Eds.), The Power of Resistance: Culture, Ideology and Social Reproduction in Global Contexts (pp. 341-366). WA, UK: Emerald Group Publishing.
Torres, C. A. and Dorio, J.N. (2017). Adult Education and Global Citizenship Education. In C.A. Torres, Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Critical Global Citizenship Education (pp. 98-103). New York, NY: Routledge
Torres, C.A. and Dorio, J.N. (2015). The Do’s and Don’ts of Global Citizenship Education. Adult Education and Development Edition 82/2015