Biography

Dr. Jane Doka is a skilled researcher with expertise in Comparative and International Education, specialising in the areas gender equity in secondary and higher education, inclusive education and education policy. Informed by decolonial approaches and taking an interdisciplinary approach, her work spans acorss Sub-Saharan Africa, United Kingdom and Europe. She is currently Co-Investigator in the Horizon EU funded European Association of Distance Training Universities (EADTU) IncluDE Project, where she is collaborating with partner institutions across Europe to develop an inclusion reference framework and self-asssssment tool for higher education institutions across the EU. 

Her doctoral research, co-funded by World Vision (UK) under the FCDO Girls Education Challenge (GEC) programme, explored the agency of 'marginalised' out-of-school girls in Zimbabwe.  She has since built on this work through a range of research and leadership roles across education programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa. She led on the OpenSTEM Africa Tertiay project, focusing on gender in STEM within higher education in Ghana and Kenya, and contributed as a data analyst on the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) project. As co-lead on the Girls' Rehabilitation, Empowerment, Agency and Transformation (GREAT) project, she has also engaged a wide range of stakeholders - inlcuding parliamentarians, NGOs, and education ministries in Uganda - to support the embedding of anti-human trafficking education into the school curriculum.

Beyond academia, Jane is an active community champion and director of Renew Life - a community based initiative to support the reintegration of people with lived experience of the criminal justice system into the community. Her emerging research interests include the migrants and education within the UK education system.  

Projects

EADTU IncluDE Project - A European Reference Framework for Inclusion, Diversity and Equity in Higher Education

The IncluDE project creates an Inclusion Reference Framework for higher education institutions along with practice-oriented instruments to assess and enhance inclusion policies and practices. This enables leaders, intermediary educational support services, teaching staff, and students to improve inclusion across all levels - course, curriculum, and institutional. In all successive phases of the project, institutional partners develop synergies, will leverage their expertise and experience. The project aligns with the concepts of inclusion, equity, diversity and inclusion challenges as defined by the European Commission, reinforcing the shared European language and approach. Inclusion challenges encompass disabilities, health problems, educations system barriers, cultural differences, social barriers, economic barriers, discrimination and geographical barriers (Erasmus+). These challenges are encountered by individual or groups of students throughout their entire academic journey, from pre-access preparation, fair admission, personalised learning and study progression, equitable assessments and examinations, and adequate preparation for their future careers. The Inclusion Reference Framework includes indicators rooted in principles and recommendations derived from research literature, international and national policies, existing institutional guidelines, and best practices. It offers a diagnostic Inclusion Evaluation Instrument, based on these indicators, that allows institutions to assess their current status, identify what should be done next, and determine what is realistically achievable within their institution. It also includes an Inclusion Monitor that helps institutional actors in structuring discussions and action planning at all levels. All is integrated in the Inclusive Higher Education Resources Panel, and the IncluDE CPD course, which provides stakeholders with tools and educational resources for managing and enhancing inclusion.