BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR
INTERNATIONAL & COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
Keynotes
The BAICE 2026 Conference will feature three keynote sessions, including the Presidential Address by Professor Simon McGrath. We will be announcing our remaining keynote speakers over the coming weeks, so please check back here soon for updates and further details.
Presidential Address
Three Lost Words of International and Comparative Education: Work, Development and Skills
Professor Simon McGrath, BAICE President 2025 – 2026
In this Presidential Address, inspired by the work of poet, Robert Macfarlane, I suggest that international and comparative education is in danger of losing important elements of its erstwhile language, rendering it less able to engage with key issues facing the field. I concern myself with three such words: work, development and skills, stressing their importance to the field, and outlining some of the insights that other areas of education and the social sciences could offer for the field of International and comparative education.
Simon McGrath holds the established chair in Education at the University of Glasgow, where he is also Associate Dean for Research Culture in the College of Social Sciences. He is a visiting professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, the latest part of more than three decade engagement with research in South Africa. He researches the complex relationships between education and development, and has a particular focus on tertiary education and skills development in Africa. In addition to his academic work, he has engaged extensively with policy and practice, including work for the South African government, for the Southern African Development Community and for a number of UN agencies.