Prachi Srivastava

Prachi Srivastava is Associate Professor specialising in education policy and global development. She is Co-Coordinator of the UNESCO UNITWIN Network on Education, Epistemic Justice and the Knowledge Commons (EpiNet). Previously, she served with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo and the International Rescue Committee. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford. Her long-term research interests are in the following areas: privatisation and private sector engagement in education; global education policy and the right to education; education disruption and recovery (long-term pandemic effects; conflict-affected contexts). Her work has been on low-/middle-income countries with a regional focus on South Asia and global applications to G20 contexts. Prof. Srivastava is recognised for coining the term, 'low-fee private schooling', and was one of the first researchers of the field. She has provided research evidence in Westminster Palace to the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Global Education for All, DFID, European Commission, Global Affairs Canada, JICA, the United Nations Inter-Parliamentary Union, UNESCO, and the World Bank, and has been commissioned by DFID, the European Commission, and UNESCO. She is a signatory to the Abidjan Principles on the human rights obligations of States to provide public education and to regulate private involvement in education. Prof. Srivastava led high-level policy briefs on education policy and planning and equity implications for recovery for the 2020, 2021, and 2022 G20 Summit processes. In Canada, she was an invited expert on education policy for the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. Dr. Srivastava provided expertise for institutions including the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), UNICEF Office of Global Insight and Policy, UNESCO, the BE2 education donor working group, and global CSOs and NGOs on these issues. Her projects have been granted ~$1 million in funding. She has given more than 200 media interviews in national and international media outlets on global education and political issues, including: The Economist, The Financial Times, The Guardian, Maclean's, Devex, Vrij Nederland, L'actualité, CBC Radio-Canada. She was Member of the World Bank Expert Advisory Council on Citizen Engagement, and has held visiting appointments at Columbia University, McGill University, National University of Singapore, and the University of Oxford. privatisation and private sector engagement in education; global education policy and the right to education; education disruption and recovery (long-term pandemic effects; conflict-affected contexts)

[2025] Srivastava, P. (2025). Reimagining Our Futures: Education and the Promise of Possibility. Comparative Education Studies, 2(1), 86-91. [2024] Srivastava, P., Matovich, I., Shields, R., & Jadhav, Y. (2024). Girls' and Women's Education in Asia: Exploring Philanthropic Networks. COMPARATIVE EDUCATION REVIEW, 68(4), 704-741. [2023] Srivastava, P., Lau, N. T. T., Ansari, D., & Thampi, N. (2023). Effects of school-level and area-level socio-economic factors on elementary school student COVID-19 infections: a population-based observational study. BMJ Open, 13(3), e065596. [2023] Matovich, I., & Srivastava, P. (2023). The G20 and the Think 20 as new global education policy actors? Discursive analysis of roles and policy ideas. Journal of International Cooperation in Education, 25(1), 4-20.