Alex Howells
I work on lifelong learning and non-formal education, with a focus on flexible pathways for young people and adults let down by formal schooling. I support ministries across Africa and Asia on policy, planning, recognition of learning and learning cities.
My doctoral research gives this work a historical and political foundation. It covers three strands: the promise of education made to young people from late colonialism to independence; the governing of the young through schooling, certificates and plans; and the national and transnational interventions behind these arrangements. Together they give a long view of the gap between access, aspiration and opportunity — and of its consequences for policy today.
Three interconnected areas of work
Work
Lifelong learning and non-formal education — policy and systems, flexible pathways and learning cities for ministries and partners.
View work →Research
The promise of education in the global South — its instruments of government and the roots of exclusion from schooling. Let Them Get Learning?
View research →The Reform Cycle
Recorded conversations with the people behind past chapters of education reform — their decisions and their legacies.
Enter the series →Background
My career has so far been spent between the classroom, the international organisation and the archive: primary teaching in Manchester, comparative education and international development in Edinburgh, and policy dialogues, workshops and research on lifelong learning in Hamburg, across Africa and Asia. This practice now rests on doctoral research in the history and politics of education in Geneva.