Dr Jennifer Jomafuvwe Agbaire

Professional biography

Dr Jennifer Jomafuvwe Agbaire is a Lecturer in Education at the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies at The Open University. She chairs the Stage 3 Multidisciplinary Dissertation module for the Master’s in Education and Childhood and Youth programmes at The Open University. She is also Co-Lead of the Learners and Learning Hub of the University's Centre for the Study of Global Development (CSGD).   She previously chaired the Stage 2 module for the Inclusive Practice pathway within the Master’s in Education programme and led Early Career Researcher (ECR) development support as part of the Core Management team of the CSGD. 

With a background in Comparative and International Education, Jennifer has over a decade of experience in teaching, research, impact, and knowledge exchange focused on how learners learn effectively and inclusively, approached from systems and intersectionality perspectives.  This informs her experience and expertise in inclusive teacher professional development and educational leadership. Over time, her work and experience have deepened in innovative, community-centred, creative and co-creative approaches, using mixed methods and including the ethics of teaching and research practices internationally. She leads and co-leads various interdisciplinary, multi-partnership projects addressing different levels of education, with a particular focus on basic and upper secondary education.

Jennifer is a core member of the Ibali Network for which her recent work include managing the AHRC-funded Ibali project that  uses a storytelling approach with teachers and young people to explore experiences of educational inclusion/exclusion  in Nigeria, South Africa and the UK. Her recent work  further include research on an IDRC-funded multi-country project on school leadership using the Improvement Science approach and working with development partner organisations -Worldreader, SUMMA and FIT-ED - in Kenya, Chile and the Philippines; community engagement with marginalised key populations in Uganda in partnership with Ahaki and CEHURD; and investigating enhanced quality and equitable continuous professional development  at scale for teachers in partnership with World Vision Zambia – an IDRC-funded research which is an offshoot of the Scottish-government-funded Zambia Education School-based Training  (ZEST) project.

Before joining The Open University, Jennifer worked with the University of Bristol on education projects in Iraq, India and Nepal, and with the Centre for Comparative and International Research in Education (CIRE) at Bristol on an IIEP-UNESCO project on systems leadership in times of crisis for inclusive education, drawing on case studies of Jordan, Burkina Faso and Kenya. Jennifer also worked with the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sussex as Teaching Fellow, and with the Sussex Centre for International Education (CIE) on a collaborative project on youth identities in Pakistan, Nigeria, Lebanon and Senegal. She also co-facilitated the Education and Social Work First-Year PhD support group at Sussex. Earlier, Jennifer has been a school teacher and then a Lecturer and teacher educator in Nigeria, leading both initial and postgraduate teacher-training courses in Comparative Education, Sociology of Education and Educational Philosophy at the University of Benin.

Jennifer is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) and currently Executive Secretary and Trustee of the British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE). She is co-editor of the British Educational Research Association (BERA) Blog. She holds a B.A (Ed) degree in English and Literature Education with First Class Honours from the University of Benin, an M.Ed in Comparative Education from the University of Lagos,  and a Postgraduate Certificate in Social Research Methods from the University of Sussex, where she also obtained her PhD researching Nigerian higher education policy for equitable access.