Professor Scherto Gill is the GHfP Institute’s Founding Director. She coordinates the UNESCO Initiative towards Collective Healing, Social Justice and Well-Being.
Scherto is also a Senior Fellow at the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace, a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA), and a laureate of the 2022 Luxembourg Peace Award. She chairs the G20 Interfaith Forum‘s Education Working Group, and is on the steering committee of Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEALL) England Hub.
As a Professor of Research, Scherto’s interests centre on understanding peace, collective healing, human well-being and global flourishing as holistic and dynamic processes. Through research and project work, she has been actively exploring ways to advance educational innovation, collective healing, peacebuilding, and social transformation. In particular, Scherto works closely with colleagues at the UNESCO Social and Human Sciences (SHS) Sector, and coordinates the activities of the UNESCO Collective Healing Initiative. To this end, she has led a number of significant research projects, including UNESCO Desk Review on Approaches and Practices of Collective Healing; participatory action research leading to the development of UNESCO Collective Healing Circles Facilitators Handbook; UNESCO Leadership for the Future Research; and conceptual exploration to understand structural injustice and to propose the Politics of Dignity, a chapter in the Routledge book entitled New Perspectives on Healing Collective Trauma.
As an author, Scherto contributes to topics including human-centred education, positive peace, collective healing, deep dialogue, ecology of well-being, narrative pedagogy, dialogic and collaborative approach to global governance. She is also on editorial boards of several journals, and has edited a number of special issues of journals. Scherto is the DeGruyter Series Editor: Re-Imagining Public Governance: Opportunities for Innovation and Promises for Transformation.
As an educator, Scherto teaches on both Masters and Doctoral programmes and offers a wide range of seminars and lectures.
As a facilitator, Scherto is experienced in creating safe spaces for deep listening and generative dialogue towards better understanding of global challenges. She convenes the UNESCO Webinar series on Healing the Wounds of History.
Scherto is a board member of Spirit of Humanity Forum, and Rising Global Peace Forum.