John Peter Portelli (born 1954) is a professor emeritus, poet and fiction writer from Malta who resides in Toronto, Canada, and Malta.

In 1977 he was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship and commenced his studies at McGill University from where he obtained an M.A.

Currently he is a professor emeritus  in the Department of Social Justice Education, and the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at OISE, University of Toronto.

He is a member of the Centre for Leadership and Diversity and a fellow a St. Michael's College, University of Toronto.

In 2005 he received the Canadian Society for the Study of Education Mentorship Award.

Since 1982 he has worked closely with teachers and school administrators in Canada and internationally.

He has been a member of the Board of the National Commission for Higher Education of Malta (2006-2017) and Chair of the Board in 2022, a Lead Expert for the European Mediterranean University, Slovenia (on issues of quality assurance), Chair of the Quality Assurance Committee for Further and Higher Education in Malta (2014-2018) and a regular member of the same Committee(until 2022), and a senior policy advisor to the Ministry of Education and Employment in Malta (2007-2022).

He has carried out Quality Assurance work in several countries including Malta, Slovenia, Turkey, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Although Portelli started writing in his youth and published poetry and essays in literary journals in Malta, his first collection of poetry was published in 2001: Bejn Żewġ Dinjiet/In Between (Toronto).

He also published a novela, Everyone but Faiza, and two collections of short stories.

His work focuses on themes of social justice, migration, and existential every day occurrences.

His latest poetry publications include:  Here Was (2023), and Vojta l-Bajja/Barren is the Bay (2023).

His work has been translated and published in Italian, Romanian, Arabic, Greek, Persian, Polish, Ukrainian, Spanish, Korean, and French.

· Confronting Educational Policy in Neoliberal Times: International Perspectives.

(With Stephanie Chitpin).· Key Questions for Educational Leaders.

· Student Engagement in Urban Schools: Beyond Neoliberal Discourses.

San Francisco, CA: Caddo Gap Press, 2007.

Special issue on “The Challenge of Student Engagement: Beyond Mainstream Conceptions and Practices”.

Special issue on “Ethics and Educational Leadership.” With Douglas Simpson.

· The Erosion of the Democratic Tradition in Education: From Critique to Possibility.