Introducing the 2021 Conference Committee

The 2021 Conference Committee has been selected based on relevant experience and trying to ensure diversity of experience (academics/ practitioners), ethnicity and gender where possible.

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Ruth Naylor, Vice Conference Chair - UKFIET Conference 2019

Dr. Ruth Naylor
Conference Chair

Ruth is a senior international consultant. Her main areas of expertise are education and conflict, girls’ education, teaching and learning. She works in research and provides technical support to donor and NGO programmes, particularly in monitoring, evaluation and results reporting.
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Moses Oketch
Deputy Conference Chair

Moses Oketch, Professor of International Education Policy and Development at the University College London (UCL) Institute of Education and Co-Director of its Centre for Education and and International Development (CEID), has published widely on the connection between the theory of human capital and implementation of policies in the areas of economics of education, education policy analysis, and impact evaluation. Read More

Melanie Ehren
Theme Convenor: Governance, power and planning

Melanie Ehren is a Professor in Educational Governance at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, director of research institute LEARN! and honorary professor at University College, Institute of Education. Her academic work focuses on the effectiveness of accountability and evaluation systems and aims to contribute to a greater understanding of the interplay between accountability and the broader education system in tackling inequality and improving student outcomes. Read More

Khadijah Fancy
Theme Convenor: Education for resilience, protection and wellbeing

Khadijah has over 20 years of working experience in gender and education. Since 2019, she has been a Senior Education Advisor at Cambridge Education, and Safeguarding Technical Lead for the company. Read More

Katie Godwin
Theme Convenor: Rethinking the Education Workforce

Katie Godwin is Head Research Associate at the Education Workforce Initiative, Education Commission. Katie is from the United States and currently based in Madrid, Spain, working as a consultant in global education research and policy. As Head Research Associate, she oversees the Education Workforce Initiative’s research agenda and activities.

Bronwen Magrath
Theme Convenor: Research Methods: Building back better in international education and development research

Bronwen is a Global Programme Manager at Aga Khan Foundation, where she leads the Schools2030 initiative – a participatory action research and learning improvement programme operating in government schools across ten countries. Read More

Divya Nambiar
Theme Convenor: Education for resilience, protection and wellbeing

Dr Divya Nambiar is Senior Consultant at Oxford Policy Management’s (OPM’s) education portfolio, with 15 years of experience in the development sector. She leads OPM’s global work in the areas of skills development, technical vocational education and training (TVET), and livelihoods.Read More

At OPM, Divya has built a new strand of work on the theme of skills development, which applies a multidimensional skills framework to address development challenges in diverse areas. This includes: early childhood development, adolescent development, training of frontline health workers, child labour, youth employability, and livelihoods. She leads and manages several international projects focused on skills, labour and youth, both within the education portfolio, and across global portfolios including health, public sector governance, and climate change and energy.

Prior to joining OPM, Divya was Senior Consultant at the Office of the Union Secretary, in the Government of India’s newly established Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) for three years. At the Ministry, she was tasked with providing evidence-based policy advisory support to the Ministry’s Union Secretary; formulating and designing national policy and programme initiatives on skills development (including India’s National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, 2015 and the National Skill Development Mission, 2015); managing the Indian government’s bilateral and multilateral skill development partnerships; designing and coordinating key strategic partnerships across government ministries and industry established Sector Skills Councils.

Divya has previously consulted for the World Bank, international think-tanks, development research centres, and the private sector, on themes including poverty reduction, livelihoods, gender and collective action, and skills development. She has also taught politics and area studies at Oxford University.

Divya holds Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) and Master of Philosophy (MPhil) degrees in Development Studies from Oxford University and a Master of Arts (MA) in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her doctoral thesis entitled ‘Skill Development and Youth Aspirations in India’, was based on 16 months of ethnographic research in south India. It examined the changing aspirations and skills requirements of youth – particularly young women, as they enter new industrial workplaces for the first time. Her thesis also provides insights into the changing role of the Indian state and documented the complex relationship between the state and private sector, as the two actors collaborate to deliver skills training programmes to India’s rural poor. She has been selected to contribute a background paper on the regulation public private partnerships in the area of skills development in India, to the upcoming Global Education Monitoring Report 2021/2022.

Becky Telford
Theme Convenor: Reimagining Learning Spaces

Dr Becky Telford is the Chief of Education at UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. She is an education specialist with twenty years’ experience in supporting children whose lives are affected by crisis and conflict. Read More

Dawit Tibebu Tiruneh
Theme Convenor: Towards building back equitably

Dawit Tibebu Tiruneh is a Research Associate at the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, University of Cambridge. He is a member of the RISE Ethiopia research program. Read More

Elizabeth Walton
Theme Convenor: Research Methods: Building back better in international education and development research

Elizabeth Walton is an associate professor in special and inclusive education in the School of Education at the University of Nottingham. She teaches MA courses in Special and Inclusive Education as well as supervising postgraduate research in aspects of inclusive education. Read More

Views expressed in outputs hosted on the UKFIET website are those of the contributors. They do not necessarily represent the views of UKFIET as an organisation, the UKFIET Trustees, Executive Committee or the wider UKFIET membership.