UNESCO Chair in International Education and Development
The work of Professor Juliet Thondhana and the UNESCO Chair Committee
The research
The UNESCO Chair in International Education and Development contributes to SDG 4 Quality Education through research that advances inclusive, equitable and lifelong learning across diverse contexts. Its work focuses on education across the life course, with projects addressing:
- higher education internationalisation
- ethical uses of AI
- teacher wellbeing and retention
- early childhood education
- inclusive schooling
- gender equity in academic leadership
The Chair’s research generates evidence to inform policy, strengthen education systems, support educators, and promote more inclusive learning environments across Africa, China and the UK.
Quality education is fundamental to achieving sustainable development. Through collaborative and internationally connected research, the Chair works to strengthen more inclusive, equitable and responsive education systems across Africa, Asia and beyond.
Professor Juliet Thondhlana
Research projects
Implementation of the internationalisation of higher education framework
Duration: January to June 2023
Researchers:
- Professor Juliet Thondhlana
- Professor Evelyn Garwe
This policy review examined the implementation of Zimbabwe’s internationalisation of higher education framework. It found progress in institutional policies, marketing, student mobility and research links, while highlighting gaps in strategic planning, coordination structures, curriculum internationalisation and sustained research collaboration.
Ethics in data and emerging technologies
Duration: ongoing
Researchers:
- Association of African Universities (AAU)
- 海角黑料
- The Ethical Data Initiative research team
This collaborative project aims to map the use of AI in African higher education. Through a quantitative survey, it will explore how AI is used in teaching, learning, research and administration, generating evidence to inform policy, ethical practice and regional collaboration.
Enhancing system support for teacher wellbeing and retention in Sub-Saharan Africa
Duration: ongoing
Researchers:
- George Washington University
- 海角黑料 and partners in Senegal, Tanzania and Zimbabwe
This vision grant will develop a trans-Atlantic research agenda on teacher wellbeing and retention. Working with stakeholders in three African countries, the project aims to establish local research hubs that generate evidence on why teachers remain in or leave the profession.
Schooling experiences of African children in Yiwu, China
Duration: ongoing
Researchers:
- Zhejiang Normal University
- 海角黑料
This collaborative pilot study will explore the schooling experiences of African children in Yiwu, China, with particular attention to everyday racism. Using a community-based approach, it will examine how schools reproduce, challenge and negotiate wider social discourses through everyday educational practices.
Chinese and UK preschool teachers’ emotional resilience in inclusive education
Duration: Ongoing
Researchers:
- Zhejiang Normal University
- 海角黑料
This comparative pilot study will explore preschool teachers’ emotional resilience and intentions to work in inclusive early childhood settings in China and the UK. Using creative qualitative methods, it will examine teacher wellbeing, professional commitment and culturally specific experiences of inclusion.
Gender and knowledge production and dissemination in Sub-Saharan Africa
Duration: 2022-2023
Researchers:
- Dr Alicia Bowman
- Professor Juliet Thondhlana
This project investigated the experiences of African early-career researchers in the social sciences and humanities. Drawing on interviews with participants from the British Academy Writing for Sustainable Development Workshop, it examined gendered challenges, motivations and aspirations in academic knowledge production.
Addressing female STEM lecturers’ underrepresentation in leadership in technical universities in Ghana
Duration: 2026
Researchers:
- Dr Alicia Bowman
- Professor Juliet Thondhlana
- Dr Liticia Effah-Manu
- Dr Felicia Nkrumah Kuagbedzi
This project examined the career experiences of female STEM lecturers in Ghanaian technical universities. It explored barriers and enablers to leadership progression and assessed how writing workshops, mentoring and capacity-building can support gender equity in academic leadership.
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The challenges
Uneven access to quality education
Across contexts, learners and educators continue to experience unequal access to inclusive, high-quality education. These inequalities are shaped by geography, gender, race, institutional capacity, and differences in national education systems.
Limited evidence for policy and planning
Education systems often lack robust, context-sensitive evidence to guide decision-making. This can make it difficult for institutions and policymakers to design effective responses to issues such as internationalisation, AI use, teacher retention, inclusion and gender equity.
Pressures on educators and institutions
Teachers, lecturers and university leaders are working in increasingly complex environments. Challenges include wellbeing, retention, limited resources, career progression barriers, and the need to respond to changing technologies and diverse learner needs.
Persistent inequalities in education and knowledge production
Gendered, racialised and structural inequalities continue to shape who participates, progresses and leads in education. These inequalities affect children’s schooling experiences, teachers’ professional lives, and academics’ opportunities to produce and share knowledge.
Addressing today’s interconnected global challenges requires research partnerships that are inclusive, interdisciplinary and internationally engaged. Our work seeks to advance educational justice, strengthen knowledge exchange, and support sustainable futures through education.
Professor Juliet Thondhlana
The response
Producing evidence for inclusive education policy
The Chair’s research generates evidence to support more inclusive and equitable education systems. Across projects, this includes policy review, survey research, interviews, pilot studies and comparative analysis focused on improving decision-making in schools, universities and wider education systems.
Strengthening international and cross-sector collaboration
The Chair works with universities, associations, policymakers and local stakeholders across Africa, China and the UK. These collaborations support shared learning, locally grounded research, and international cooperation around SDG 4 priorities.
Supporting educators and education leaders
Research on teacher wellbeing, retention, inclusive education and academic leadership helps identify the support educators need to thrive. The Chair’s work also informs capacity-building activities such as mentoring, workshops, leadership development and research networks.
Advancing equity across the education life course
By addressing early childhood education, schooling, higher education, academic careers and lifelong learning, the Chair contributes to SDG 4 across the full education journey. Its work places particular emphasis on inclusion, gender equity, ethical innovation and sustainable educational development.
Higher education has a critical role to play in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals. Through partnerships across sectors and regions, the Chair supports research that strengthens educational opportunity, equity and innovation.
Professor Juliet Thondhlana
Innovation
The Chair network's renewal programme advances a distinctive and innovative agenda that responds directly to UNESCO's Priority Africa and Campus Africa objectives. Its originality lies not in any single activity, but in the coherent architecture that connects research, training, mentorship, and policy influence across three continents.
Four features define the network's innovation:
- Co-creation with African and Asian subject matter experts is treated as a methodological and ethical commitment rather than a procedural requirement, operationalising decolonial and pluriversal principles in concrete research and capacity-building practice.
- The network establishes a tri-continental collaboration architecture that links Africa, Asia (China and Malaysia), and Europe (UK), moving beyond conventional North–South or South–South paradigms toward genuine triangular cooperation that amplifies Global South scholarship in dialogue with itself.
- The projects integrate evidence generation, curriculum development, mentorship, and policy engagement as a single value chain rather than discrete interventions, ensuring that diagnostic research informs training, training informs mentorship, and mentorship feeds policy influence at national and continental levels.
- Gender equity, ethical reflection on data and emerging technologies, and attention to researcher wellbeing are embedded as structural design principles across all projects, advancing SDG 5 and SDG 4 in an integrated rather than siloed manner.
Together, these features position the Chair as more than a collaborator on individual initiatives; it functions as a sustained platform for transformative practice in African higher education. By coupling rigorous research with scalable capacity-building, institutionalised mentorship, and policy-relevant outputs, the renewal programme aims to leave a durable infrastructure of partnership, evidence, and pluriversal knowledge production that extends well beyond the funding cycle.
Impact
1. Individual impact
It strengthens the capabilities, confidence, and career trajectories of women academic leaders, early-career researchers, doctoral students, and female STEM lecturers across the continent. Individuals gain technical skills, leadership capacities, mentorship relationships, and access to international publication and networking opportunities that would otherwise be inaccessible, with specific attention to wellbeing and mental health alongside professional development.
2. Institutional impact
Partner universities and HEIs benefit from institutionalised mentorship schemes, modular curricula, train-the-trainer toolkits, and implementation frameworks designed for sustainability. The network's expanded inter-institutional partnership, across the Africa, China, the UK, and Malaysia, create a durable platform for collaborative teaching, research, and student exchange that strengthens institutional capacities.
3. Systemic and policy impact
The programme is explicitly designed to inform national and continental higher education policy through the AAU and partner ministries. Evidence from diagnostic research, pilot evaluations, and gender disparity analyses will translate into actionable recommendations embedded in HEI governance, leadership development, and gender equity strategies, ensuring that academic findings produce institutional and regulatory change.
4. Epistemic and cultural impact
By centring African and Asian scholarship, multilingual dissemination, and creative formats including storytelling and arts-based research, the programme advances pluriversal knowledge production and democratises participation in international higher education debates. It directly challenges the dominance of northern frameworks in conversations about internationalisation, AI ethics, TVET, and sustainability.
5. Cross-cutting impact
Gender equity, ethical data practice, decolonising pedagogy, and researcher wellbeing are embedded as structural principles across all activities rather than treated as discrete themes. This integrated approach shifts not only the structures but also the cultures of African higher education, contributing to long-term transformation in how knowledge is produced, shared, and valued.
6. Legacy and sustainability
The Chair programme is designed to leave a lasting legacy of more women in leadership, more early career researchers publishing internationally, more institutions equipped with contextually grounded curricula and mentorship infrastructure, more equitable partnerships across continents, and more pluralistic conversations shaping the future of education globally.
UNESCO Chair in International Education and Development website
Juliet Thondhlana and the UNESCO Chair Committee
Professor Juliet Thondhlana is a Professor of International Education and Development. She has has held the UNESCO Chair in International Education and Development since December 2022.
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Professor Thondhlana is supported by the UNESCO Chair Committee with members from the 海角黑料's tri-campus network in the UK, China, and Malaysia.
The UNESCO Chair Committee