Alex Howells
My work explores the ways in which societies organise learning – and have organised it in the past – in pursuit of social, economic and political goals, from decolonisation and development to lifelong learning and today's debates about technology. I am interested in how ideas about learning travel across borders, change over time and impact people's lives. I also support international organisations, governments and partners with learning policy and practice, connecting local experience to the global governance of education.
Three interconnected areas of work
Work
Policy advice, capacity-building and research with governments, international organisations and partners on learning-system improvement.
View work →Research
A transnational history of education, development and the promises attached to learning – Let Them Get Learning: The Promise of Education, Kenya and the World, 1945–1980.
View research →The Reform Cycle
Recorded conversations with the people who shaped earlier cycles of learning reform — their stories and legacies.
Enter the series →Background
For more than a decade I have moved between the classroom, the international organisation and the archive. I began as a primary teacher in Manchester, trained in comparative education and international development in Edinburgh, and later worked at the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning in Hamburg, where I coordinated policy dialogues, workshops and research across Africa and Asia. These experiences underpin my doctoral research in international history and politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute.