Professor of Sociology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Before joining UAB with a Ramon y Cajal grant in 2011, he was a researcher and lecturer in IDS at the University of Amsterdam. Currently, he leads the ERC-funded project Reforming Schools Globally: A Multiscalar Analysis of Autonomy and Accountability Policies in the Education Sector, and is one of the directors of the Erasmus Plus-awarded GLOBED Master's. With a cross-disciplinary training in sociology and education studies, Verger publishes in comparative education, sociology of education and development studies journals. He has edited several books on global education policy, and is one of the lead editors of the Journal of Education Policy and the World Yearbook of Education. Beyond academia, he regularly collaborates with international organisations, governmental agencies and international NGOs to inform their policies and strategies in education.

Research interests

Verger’s research examines the relationship between globalization, governance institutions and education policy – i.e. how education policies are internationally disseminated and enacted in different institutional settings, and how this impacts education quality and equity. In the last years, he has applied this research perspective to the study of public-private partnerships and new public management reforms in education. These are two policy models that, after decades of continuous educational expansion, countries in both the Global North and the Global South are adopting in an attempt to improve the performance of their education systems cost-efficiently, but with results that are far from conclusive. Currently, in the context of the REFORMED project, Verger studies the multiple trajectories and impact of market-like, school autonomy and performance-based accountability policies in a sample of European and Latin American countries.

Keywords

global education policy; educational reform; comparative education; multi-scalar governance; public-private partnerships; accountability in education; international organisations