Research Fellows
Dr Joseph Ghartey Ampiah
Joseph is a Lecturer in Education at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He is managing the fieldwork stage for CREATE in Ghana. His research interests include curriculum and methodological issues in primary and secondary education.
Eva Bulgrin
Prior to becoming a Research Fellow within the Department of Education, Eva conducted a PhD study on 'The discursive and social practices of actors in Benin involved in the provision of pre- and primary education in the context of the 2010 decentralisation policy'.
Before and during her research career, Eva has been an education & development advisor in Global South contexts, notably West Africa and the South Caucasus.
Mieke Lopes Cardozo
Mieke’s academic research, teaching and supervision focuses on the role of education in processes of peacebuilding, social and gender justice and inclusive development in the contexts of Sri Lanka, Aceh/Indonesia, Bolivia, Myanmar and Higher Education in the Netherlands. Mieke is currently Senior Lecturer in Education and Inclusive Development at the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research, and part of the Governance and Inclusive Development Research Group. Associate Fellow at the Centre for International Education at the University of Sussex.
Professor Naureen Durrani
Dr Keith Holmes
Keith is a Programme Specialist in the Division for Basic Learning and Skills Development at UNESCO HQ, Paris . He formerly worked as a Lecturer in International Education at the University of Sussex with specific responsibility for the MA in International Education and Development course. His research interests include vocational and tertiary education, and he has worked and researched in the Caribbean and several emerging countries in Eastern Europe.
Dr Sara Humphreys
Sara is a Lecturer in Education and works on the International Education & Development MA. Her research centres on gender and discipline in education. Sara's work experience includes Pakistan, Madagascar, Nigeria, Botswana and Namibia.
Professor Fiona Leach
Fiona is an Emeritus Professor of Education. She was convenor of the new International Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD) during 2003-4 and Director of the University of Sussex Institute of Education between 2001 and 2003. Her research interests are: gender and education, training for women's empowerment, educational development projects, cultural issues in education, cross-cultural transfer of knowledge and skills, and community participation in education and development. She is best known for her research and awareness-raising in the field of Gender Violence in Schools. She also developed a website in collaboration with id21 to disseminate findings from research studies on this topic, as well as to highlight successful initiatives aimed at counteracting school-based violence (see www.eldis.org and search for 'gender violence in schools'). Fiona has also been involved in researching equity issues at the university level with Professor Louise Morley through a project on Widening Participation in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania.
Professor Shireen Motala
Shireen is Head of the Postgraduate School at the University of Johannesburg, and a Professor in the Faculty of Education.
Prior to joining the University of Johannesburg in 2010, Shireen was Director of the Education Policy Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her academic qualifications include: a BA (University of Durban-Westville), a B Social Science Honours (University of Cape Town), an MA (University of Warwick), a PGCE (University of London) and a PhD (University of the Witwatersrand). In March 2010, she was appointed Director of the newly established Postgraduate Centre: Research and Innovation at the University of Johannesburg. In May 2016, she was appointed Senior Director of the Postgraduate School.
Shireen's research interests and publications focus on capacity building, adult basic education and training, repetition and dropout in primary schooling, youth, education financing, and quality indicators and school performance.
Professor Robert van Niekerk
Robert works within the Wits School of Governance's Chair in Public Governance, University of the Witwatersrand. He holds a BA (English) & BA Hons (Industrial Sociology) from the University of Cape Town, an MSc (Social Policy) from the London School of Economics (LSE) and an MPhil and DPhil (Comparative Social Policy) from the University of Oxford. He was a holder of the LSE Students Union Anti-Apartheid Scholarship.
Robert's current research projects include a comparative international research project on ‘Cultures of Social Solidarity and the Public Good’ with scholars based at the University of Havana, Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo and the Catholic University of Luanda and an international comparative research project on ‘Re-imagining the Ethos of an Efficient and Capable Public Service in South Africa’ focused on the health service.
Dr Mark Richmond: ex-UNESCO, France
ex-UNESCO, France
Dr Irfan Ahmed Rind
Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Education, Sukkur Institute of Business Administration, Pakistan
Professor Ricardo Sabates
Ricardo is a Professor of Education and International Development in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, where he is also member of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre.
Ricardo is a Development Economist with 15 years of experience working in areas of educational inequalities - mostly in the context of international development. An academic since 2002, he started at the Institute of Education, London, as a research fellow (then senior research fellow) at the Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning. In 2008, Ricardo moved to the Department of Education, University of Sussex as a Senior Lecturer (later Reader) where he became an active member of the Centre for International Education (CIE) and led the International Education & Development MA course (2010-2012). Ricardo lived in Rwanda in 2012-2014 where he continued to undertake research in educational inequalities for the Centre for International Education, University of Sussex.
Viola Selenica
Ervjola Selenica holds a PhD in International Studies from the University of Trento Italy. She has a BA in International Relations and Political Science from the University of Bologna, Italy, an MSc. in International Development Studies from the University of Amsterdam (with Distinction), the Netherlands and a post-graduate diploma on Peace and Conflict from the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway. She has worked for the International Training Programme for Conflict Management (Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa - Italy) and as a consultant for UNESCO, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, FRIDE/European Parliament, the Kosovo Foundation for Open Society. Her research interests include the political economy and politics of education reforms, state building and state formation in war and post-war settings, peacebuilding, conflict, critical security and the global governance of aid and development. Ervjola has a country expertise on Kosovo and East Timor.
Dr Margaret Sinclair
Independent Researcher
Tony Somerset
Tony has worked on issues concerning the development of education in low-income countries since 1963; initially in Uganda and Kenya and subsequently in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. He joined the Kenya National Examination Council at its inception in the late 1970s where, as Head of Research, he was responsible for implementing a major examination reform programme. In recent years he has returned to Kenya where he has carried out a series of studies concerning access to primary schooling as part of the CREATE research project.
Dr Prachi Srivastava
Dr Prachi Srivastava is a tenured Associate Professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa, in the area of education and international development. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford. Earlier, she was Lecturer with CIE (2006-08), and had responsibilities for the MAIED and MAIE programmes. She previously served with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, and has held visiting appointments at the National University of Singapore, University of Oxford, and Columbia University.
She is credited with coining the term, ‘low-fee private schooling’, and was among the first researchers to conduct research on the topic. Her research interests are: the privatisation of schooling in developing countries; philanthropy and philanthropic governance in education in the Global South; new/non-traditional non-state private actors in education; and global education policy and the right to education. She has field experience in India, Sri Lanka, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. She is currently Principal Investigator for a major international collaborative project on the role of non-state private actors and the right to education in India and the Global South funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Read more about Prachi Srivastava
Twitter: @PrachiSrivas
Professor Oscar Valiente
Oscar is a Professor of Education and International Development (Educational Leadership & Policy) at the University of Glasgow where his research focuses on education policy from an international and comparative perspective.
Oscar was previously a Lecturer in International Education and Development within the School of Education and Social Work and a member of CIE for whom he remains a Visiting Fellow. He has worked for the OECD in Paris - initially at the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), and later at the Programme for Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE). Oscar has also worked for the Observatory of Vocational Education in Barcelona and the Jaume Bofill Foundation. His research interests are globalisation and education policy; TVET and skills development; widening participation to tertiary education; university/regional engagement; ICT for education and development.