Research interests
My principal research interests are global governance, comparative research, and the varying outcomes of liberalisation and liberal ideology in education sectors across the globe since the 1970s.
I draw upon the theories and concepts from the disciplines of education, sociology and political science to make sense of these developments.
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Informed by my background as teacher of young migrants and refugees, and teacher trainer on professional development courses across Denmark, my first research was focused on language learning, intercultural education and identity politics, often in a comparative perspective. This is reflected in my MA dissertation "The Bias of Markets" which was a study of the ways that liberalisation in the English and Danish school systems from the 1980s onwards went hand-in-hand with a turn towards nationalist and monocultural identity politics. The study was published as a monograph by the University of Copenhagen Press in 2011.
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In line with the trend in comparative education research, I had at that point become interested in global and regional developments, and especially the politics and policies of the European Union and the OECD. My PhD thesis focused on the political attention directed towards the teaching profession globally, with the OECD programme Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) as a case in point.
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My research since then has retained the focus on the governance of teachers and teaching in a transnational and often comparative perspective. Being part of the TEACHERSCAREERS team in UCLouvain gave me the possibility to conduct a major review on the research literature in the field as well as further empirical research on EU's education and employment governance.
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In addition, the project "Social dialogue and industrial relations in education: the challenges of multi-level governance and of privatization in Europe" allowed me to further specialise in employment policy and working conditions in the education sector. The one-year project ran from April 2020 to March 2021 and was funded by the European Commission. The full research report is available here.
