Professor Mary Kalantzis (born 1949) is an Australian author and academic, and is a former dean of the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in the United States.
[2] Mary Kalantzis was born in a village in the Peloponnese, Greece, and migrated to Australia with her family in 1953.
Her service activities include being a board member of Teaching Australia, belonging to The National Institute for Quality Teaching and School Leadership, appointment as a commissioner of the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, chair of the Queensland Ethnic Affairs Ministerial Advisory Committee, vice president of the National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia and a member of the Australia Council's Community Cultural Development Board.
[3] In 1998, Kalantzis was one of the founders of the Unity Party, created to oppose the anti-immigration politics of Pauline Hanson and One Nation.
[4] She has been an author or co-author of books, research reports and refereed journal articles.