Knowledge Production, Networks, and Power in Global Education Governance: The Politics of Expertise in UNESCO, OECD, and the World Bank

This project examines how UNESCO, the OECD, and the World Bank produce and circulate education policy knowledge, and how these processes shape epistemic authority in global education governance. It focuses on the actors and networks behind policy knowledge production, the organizational practices through which expertise is produced and mobilized, and the inequalities that influence whose knowledge is recognized as authoritative.

The project asks three central questions:

• Who produces education policy knowledge for these organizations, and how are epistemic communities formed?
• How do organizational practices shape the production and mobilization of expertise?
• How do inequalities across institutions, disciplines, and regions shape whose knowledge is recognized and legitimized?

To examine these questions, the project combines bibliometric network analysis of education-related publications from 2014-2024 with semi-structured and network-cued interviews with authors and IGO staff. By comparing UNESCO, the OECD, and the World Bank, it seeks to reveal how organizational structures and knowledge networks shape what and whose knowledge counts in global education governance.

Principal Investigator: Chanwoong Baek

Timeline: September 2026 – August 2030