KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Carolina Kürüf Poblete Gálvez is a woman indigenous Mapuche, mother and player of the ancient game palin. Academic at the University of Santiago, Chile and associate at the Catholic University of Temuco.  She is a Professor of Physical Education and a Doctor in Education. Member of the Pan American Association of Ancestral Games and Sports, Member of the Latin American Council of Games, Sports and Corporal Practices of Indigenous Peoples, and Member of the Indigenous Games Network of the Mercosur Forum.

Her work is focused on indigenous games and sports in contemporary society within formal and informal education, diversity, gender and initial teacher education. She has worked in the curricular development of pedagogical training in physical education at the University of Santiago de Chile and has collaborated in the creation of the new career of Pedagogy in Language and Culture of the Catholic University of Temuco.  She has been an evaluator of the National Accreditation Commission for Chilean universities and has recently won an international award of the American Association for Applied Linguistics for their participation in the Congress of Languages 2023, through the Fund to Support Indigenous Language Scholarships.

The academic work carried out by Carolina tries to broaden the look at what are the corporal practices in physical education attending to diversity and history. Beyond innovation plans to improve health status, consider the collective imaginary and meaning that society is giving to body practices under the questions: Have we detached ourselves from the pleasure and territorial identity of games and physical activities by an excess of globality? Do we copy parameters from other latitudes to solve local issues? Or what sense do we give to what we are doing? And therefore, what are we teaching to give meaning and appropriation to bodily practices for the well-being of the people we educate?