Nermin Vehabovic

I am a teacher - scholar activist - mentor whose work lies at the nexus of Literacy and Teacher Education, community and global engagement, and humanizing approaches to justice and equity in education. Since joining the Department of Education and Wellness in 2022, I have founded Welcome New Neighbor, a collaboration between the Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education and community partners that resettle and support people with refugee backgrounds in Burlington and nearby communities, which comprises of initiatives that connect Teacher Candidates with multi/translingual children, youth, and their families in the families’ homes.

Grounded in critical, sociocultural, translanguaging, postcolonial theories and feminisms, as well as my own lived experience as a person with a refugee background from Bosnia and Herzegovina, I center my scholarship and pedagogy on dismantling deficit narratives and co-constructing liberatory learning spaces with multi/translingual children, youth, and families with refugee backgrounds, and their educators. My teaching is informed by community-engaged and justice-oriented approaches that seek to create equitable learning opportunities for all students. These approaches resist harm and instead center joy, engagement, and the emotional and identity-affirming wellbeing of children, youth, and communities.

As an empathetic person committed to personal and collective healing, I bring emotional presence, relational attunement, and a humanizing ethic of care into every facet of my work. Across my research and practice, I am committed to critical and humanizing methodologies that honor the dignity, agency, and lived experiences of children, youth, families, and educators, while preparing Teacher Candidates and M.Ed. Candidates to engage in liberatory praxis, act in solidarity with marginalized communities, embody critical humility, and cultivate justice and equity-centered practices grounded in ethical responsiveness and transformative purpose. Outside of work, I live to travel, and my happy place is the North Shore of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i.