Karen Mundy is a leading expert on education in the developing world.  She has published widely on international development and has worked as an advisor for many international organizations.

In 2018 I returned to the University of Toronto following a four year stint as the Chief Technical Officer at the Global Partnership for Education, the world’s largest global fund providing more than $500 million per year to 67 developing countries.  At GPE, I led the development of GPE’s Strategic Plan 2015-2020, its Gender Equality Strategy, its Results Framework, Monitoring and Evaluation Strategy (2015-2020), and the publication of GPE’s first two Results Reports. I also built GPE’s Education Policy and Performance Team from scratch – when started it was a team of one – and when I left EPP was a group of  25 technical experts, dedicated to supporting knowledge exchange, policy learning, quality assurance and evaluation for the members of the partnership.

At the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto,  I have been a Canada Research Chair (2002-2012), the Associate Dean of Research and Innovation (2012-2014) and the director of the  Comparative, International and Development Education Centre (CIDEC) at OISE, which hosts Canada’s largest graduate degree in this area (2002-2011). I have also been the President of the  Comparative and International Education Society (2014-2015) and presently sit on the advisory board of the leading journal in the field of comparative education, the Comparative Education Review.  I began my career as a teacher, researcher and consultant in East and Southern Africa.

My research has covered the global politics of “education for all”; educational policy and reform in Sub-Saharan Africa; the role of civil society organizations in educational change; and global education in Canadian schools. I have published six books and more than five dozen articles and book chapters, and am a contributor to dozens of policy papers and reports.  I  twice won the Bereday award for best article in the Comparative Education Review (1998, 2015). More than two dozen students have completed PhDs under my supervision – so far!

I remain committed to playing an active role in policy dialogue about education and international development. Under “Practice” you will find examples of my practical commitments, which have included being an external reviewer of the World Bank’s education activities in Africa;  research on Canada’s aid effectiveness agenda in education; support to the Mastercard Foundation’s Secondary Education in Africa project; and research on civil society and private actors in education for the Hewlett Foundation, the Open Society (Soros) Foundation, the International Development Research Centre. Other clients have included, Canada’s international development agency, UNESCO,  and Unicef. In 2002, I was described as among Canada’s 10 best educators by Time Magazine. I hope to continue that early promise.