Professor Arvind Singhal, Professor of Communication and Director of the Social Justice Initiative at the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP). Singhal teaches and conducts research on the Diffusion or Innovations, the Positive Deviance, organizing for social change, the entertainment education strategy, and liberating structures. Under his leadership UTEP has become the leading global hub on the teaching, research and practice of the Positive Deviance approach. Arvind is an internationally acclaimed passionate advocate and promoter of the use of the PD approach in many fields. He has written extensively on his and others work using the PD approach. His recent work has taken him to Japan, Jamaica, Norway and India among others. Domestically he has been instrumental in the spread of the PD approach in public health, corporate citizenship among others. Singhal has excelled at promoting the use of the PD approach in applied research with students and fellow academics in many universities throughout the world. Learn more about his work here! http://www.utepmagazine.com
Junlei Li, Ph.D.: Finding Essential in the Simple
Professor Junlei Li, is Saul Zaentz Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Development ; Faculty co-Chair, Human Development and Education program, Harvard Graduate School of Education
He confided in this Harvard Gazette article in December 2023 that he was trained to find and fix what is wrong in the fields of human development. He said that “The Power of the Positive Deviance Approach book ..radically changed how I approach my field- it taught me to honor the expertise and wisdom of those who are already on the front lines of any difficult work. It led me to learn from villagers who fostered children with severe disabilities, childcare providers in low-income communities, and social workers in youth group homes”.
Read his observations here.