Teaching Sustainability through Storytelling

Manuela Kelly Calzini is an educator, researcher, and storyteller who integrates academic insight with creative practice. She serves as Senior Academic for English Language at Trinity College London Italy and lectures in Primary Education Sciences at the University of Florence. Her professional focus includes communicative language teaching, storytelling in education, and creative methodologies to support multilingual and multicultural classrooms.

Since 1992, Manuela has explored the educational and transformative power of narrative across formal and informal learning contexts in Italy, Switzerland, and the UK. Her interdisciplinary work demonstrates how storytelling fosters linguistic competence, intercultural understanding, environmental literacy, and critical thinking.

As an ELT author and experienced teacher trainer, she designs and delivers workshops that blend drama, movement, and performance-based strategies to make complex topics accessible and meaningful for learners of all ages. Manuela also performs and facilitates in both English and Italian.

Her commitment to social and educational inclusion is evident in her long-standing volunteer work with the Hands Up Project, where she uses storytelling to connect with children in Gaza and the West Bank. She is a member of the UK Society for Storytelling and continues to investigate narrative’s potential as a catalyst for sustainability education and civic engagement.

Manuela believes that the stories we choose to tell shape the future we hope to build.

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