Mr Dewi Knight

Dewi is the founding Director of PolicyWISE, the UK and Ireland comparative policy, research, and knowledge exchange initiative, hosted by The Open University.

He leads the team and it's mission to improve and inform policymaking across the nations through their Wise in 5 briefings, training, and cross-nation research projects.

Dewi's background is education policy and strategy. As the Welsh Government’s specialist adviser for education reform, he authored the national education strategy recognised by the OECD as a leading international example of successful system change.

He was at the heart of the Welsh Government’s education response to the Covid pandemic, as well as student finance reforms and the creation of Medr (the Commission for Tertiary Education & Research). He led for the government on many international education agreements, in North America, South East Asia and Europe.

He also worked on UK–China education policy relations and negotiations for the British Council, and was Director of Policy, and member of the VC Executive Board, at the University of Bedfordshire. He is an academic adviser and mentor for UKRI and ESRC research-policy leadership programmes, and a board member at Seren Books.

He is a project co-lead for the OU hosted ESRC funded Research Capability Hub, which leads the delivery of an exciting new approach to research skills development in the social sciences.

His research interests include inter-governmental relations, curriculum reform, higher education policy and funding, comparative policy analysis and education history. He regulalry writes and presents on these issues to both academic and policymaker audiences.