Dr. Katherine Armstrong Obando holds a Ph.D. in Pedagogy, an M.A. in Psychology with an emphasis on the dynamic approach, and an M.A. in Education and Behavioural Sciences. She is also a certified Educational Diagnostician, enabling her to conduct academic and IQ assessments to determine students’ eligibility for Special Education and related services in the United States. Additionally, she holds teaching certifications in Secondary English Language Arts and Reading, Special Education, Gifted and Talented, English as a Second Language, Primary Bilingual Education, and Primary Generalist Education. With over 20 years of experience as a Second Language Teacher and teacher trainer, Dr. Armstrong has worked in Costa Rica, the United States, and Europe. She served as Director of Multilingual Programmes and a teacher trainer in a major school district in Houston, Texas, and was also a visiting professor at Høgskolen i Østfold in Norway. There, she developed the Peace Pedagogy course as part of the Master's Programme in Diversity and Inclusion in Pedagogy.
Currently, Dr. Armstrong lectures at the University of Verona in Italy, where she teaches General Psychology and Psychology of Communication within the Master’s Programme in Intercultural Competence and Management. Her focus includes communication, conflict management, and intercultural mediation in contexts such as business, education, socio-health, law, mass media, and Italian as a second language. Dr. Armstrong is also active in research and the design and implementation of EU projects on intercultural communication and the management of diverse socio-economic settings. Her primary research interests include globalisation and identity, intercultural pedagogy, intercultural consultancy, intercultural skills, and intercultural communication.