policy research

The evolving higher education system is Somalia. In conversation with Guglielmo Giordano, Director of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation in Mogadishu

War and conflict have systemic impacts on higher education: there is physical damage as universities are attacked or occupied by armed groups; loss of life and forced displacement of academic staff and students; and institutional weakening as post-conflict financial resources are allocated to basic services first. Although this is slowly changing, higher education systems are often not a priority during post-conflict recovery.

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Podcast – Bridging education research with policy and practice. In conversation with Prof. Elina Lehtomäki of the University of Oulu

Every year I travel a couple of times north to the city of Oulu to give a class on development theories to the master students at the Faculty of Education at the University. The master course is part of the work of the interdisciplinary research group called Education, Diversity, Globalisation and Ethics. The group examines

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Podcast – Exploring the evidence eco-system for public policy in Pakistan. In conversation with Vaqar Ahmed

How to go about the design of a project that focuses on the ways different forms of evidence and knowledge are used to inform policy decisions? How to identify entry points, opportunities, and the problems that policymaking organisations want to solve rather than starting from pre-determined solutions? How to design the research and analysis to

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Podcast: The recovery and development of universities in Somalia

The history of universities and higher education in Somalia is marked by the civil war that began in 1991 and which lasted for more than 10 years and which brought the higher education to a halt. How is the university landscape recovering and developing? What has been the role of the private sector in the

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The Fourth Industrial Revolution needs strong foundations in the education system. The comment from Jonathan Pincus on our new discussion paper

I am getting more feedback about the discussion paper published by Southern Voice that I have co-produced with Maria Malho, Vanesa Weyrauch and Fred Carden with support from HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation, State Capability, Policymaking and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Do Knowledge Systems Matter?. The aim of the discussion paper is to identify the key questions we

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The future of education and education for the future

Here my takeaways from two great days at the University of Oulu where I attended the Burning Questions 2019 event to discuss and challenge the status quo of education systems and education in international development.

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Can there be too much data to inform policy and what skills are needed for the policymaking of tomorrow

One of the things I enjoy doing during the summer in Finland is to work in the garden, in the late afternoon, and listen to a LSE public lecture podcast. Last week I listened to two really interesting ones. In the first podcast, Tracking the Rise in Global Economic Inequality: new evidence from the world inequality report

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Reference societies and adaptive development: a conversation with Daniel Suryadarma about Indonesia’s participation in the PISA educational assessment

During a seminar organised by the EduKnow research group at the University of Tampere on comparative education, I came across the interesting concept of reference society. In a nutshell, countries which, like Finland, find themselves at the top of the PISA ranking may become models or references for countries looking for ways to improve their education policies

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