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 using critical feminist, race, sociological, and political economic approaches.

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

Book

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

Articles & Chapters

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. (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.  I will attempt to respond to these emails, but please note that I will not review or 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.