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. He has lead the ERC-funded project Reforming Schools Globally: A Multiscalar Analysis of Autonomy and Accountability Policies in the Education Sector (2016-2022), and is one of the directors of the Erasmus Plus-awarded GLOBED Master. 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 formulated, promoted and enacted in different institutional settings, and how these processes impact education quality and equity. In the last years, he has applied this research perspective to the study of public-private partnerships, market reforms and new public management policies in education. Methodologically, his research combines policy convergence analyses in a wide sample of countries with small-ne process-tracing and implementation studies. His work is unique in retriveing the mechansims connecting the logic of adoption of policy instruments at the governent level to the everyday performance of these instruments in different school settings. 

Keywords

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