Position/Status

Associate Professor 

E-mail Address

kjm78@cam.ac.uk

Website

kmoeller.org

Qualifications

•  Ph.D., Social & Cultural Studies, Graduate School of Education, Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of California, Berkeley
• MA, Curriculum & Teaching, College of Education, Michigan State University
• BS, Sociology and Human & Organizational Development, Minor in African American & Diaspora Studies, Vanderbilt University

Profile

My interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching focus on the relationships among capitalism, de/coloniality, international development, and education. 

I am the author of The Gender Effect: Capitalism, Feminism, and the Corporate Politics of Development (University of California Press 2018), winner of the National Women’s Studies Association’s Sara A. Whaley Prize.

I am currently a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow (2024-2025) for the book project, Silicon Futures.  It examines Silicon Valley’s investments in the intertwined futures of education and work around the world with a focus on venture capitalists and educational technology companies.

The Spencer Foundation has funded my research on venture capital investment in educational technology companies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

My academic writing has also been published in scholarly journals, such as Feminist Studies, Feminist Theory, Race, Ethnicity & Education, Educational Researcher,  Journal of Education Policy, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Globalisation, Education & Societies, Education Policy Analysis Archives, and International Journal of Education Development.

My research has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.  I am a former recipient of the Fulbright and Fulbright-Hay fellowships in Brazil. 

In addition to my academic writing, I have written essays for The New Yorker, Chronicle of Philanthropy, and Fast Company based on my research.

I have also appeared on BBC’s Business Daily, NPR’s Marketplace, Wisconsin Public Radio’s Central Time, Northeast Public Radio’s 51%, among other programmes.

I am an editor of Feminist Studies, the first scholarly journal in the field of gender, feminist, and women’s studies in the U.S.

Prior to my appointment at the University of Cambridge. I was a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow, Assistant Professor in the School of Education at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Stanford University. I was also postdoctoral researcher at the Haas Institute for a Fair & Inclusive Society (now Othering & Belonging Institute) at University of California, Berkeley. Prior to graduate school, I was a high school teacher in the U.S. and Honduras.

Teaching

• Postgraduate
  • Masters in Knowledge, Power & Politics
  • Ph.D. in Education
• Undergraduate
  • Tripos in Education

Publications

Moeller, K. (2025). Conclusion: Reflections and Provocations on De/colonising Development and Education. In Faul, M. V. (Ed.). Transforming Development in Education: From Coloniality to Rethinking, Reframing and Reimagining Possibilities (pp. 203-214). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Moeller, K. (2024) The risky business of research: the control of academic knowledge production and the racialized & gendered contours of corporate power. Feminist Theory. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14647001241284984.

Dalmaso-Junqueira, B. & Moeller, K. (2024). An analytic framework for theorizing the anti-gender agenda in education. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 32(60), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.32.8829 (also published in Portuguese: Um quadro analítico para teorizar a agenda antigênero na educação)

Moeller, K., Kanopka, K., French, J., Hook, T., & Sedighi, M. (2024). Educational capitalisation: a co-formational feminist framework for conceptualising investment in for-profit education within the racialised and gendered political economy. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2024.2397811

Moeller, K. (2024). “On Hauntings and Hierarchies: Bridging between Elite Universities and Communities.” Globalisation, Societies & Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2283509

Moeller, K. (2023). “Girls as New Frontiers: Corporatized Development and the Politics of Investing in Girls.” In Switzer, Heather, Karishma Desai, and Emily Bent (eds), Girls in Global Development: Theoretical Contestations, Empirical Demands. Berghahn Press.

Moeller, K. (2021) “Nike’s Search for Third World Potential: The Tensions between Corporate Funding and Feminist Futures.” In Millicent Thayer and Ashwini Tambe (eds), Transnational Feminist Itineraries: Situating Theory and Activist Practices. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Moeller, K. (2020). “The Politics of Curricular Erasure: Debates on Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Brazilian ‘Common Core’ Curriculum.” Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 24(1), 18-38. (Citation count: 12)

Moeller, K. (2020). “Accounting for the Corporate: An Analytic Framework for Understanding Corporations in Education.” Educational Researcher. 49(4), 232-240. (Citation count: 36)

Tarlau, R. and K. Moeller. (2020). “O Consenso por Filantropia: Como Uma Fundação Privada Estabeleceu a BNCC no Brazil.” Currículo sem Fronteiras 20(2), 553-603. (Citation count: 92)

Tarlau, R. and K. Moeller. (2019). “Philanthropizing Consent: How a Private Foundation Pushed through National Learning Standards in Brazil.” Journal of Education Policy, 35(3), 337-366.

Moeller, K. (2018). The Gender Effect: Capitalism, Feminism, and the Corporate Politics of Development. Oakland: University of California Press.

Moeller, K. (2016). “A Critical Feminist and Race Critique of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century,” Special Issue on Piketty’s Relevance for Education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(6), 810-822.

Moeller, K. (2014). “Searching for Adolescent Girls in Brazil: Corporate Development and the Transnational Politics of Poverty in the Girl Effect.” Feminist Studies, 40(3), 575-601.

Moeller, K. (2013) “Proving the Girl Effect: Corporate Knowledge Production and Educational Intervention.” International Journal of Educational Development, 33(6), 612-621.

Prospective Ph.D. Students

I will be accepting applications for doctoral students with a strong background in critical social theories to start their studies in October 2026.

You are welcome to email me prior to applying, but please note that I will not give input on project proposals before a formal application is received.  

For Masters applications, it is not necessary to identify a supervisor before applying and no contact prior to application is expected.