Position/Status
Assistant Professor - on Research Leave (2024-2025)
E-mail Address
kjm78@cam.ac.uk
Website
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
I am a critical feminist scholar, educator and author. My interdisciplinary, ethnographic scholarship examines the relationships between capitalism, education, and international development through 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 earlier research on venture capital investment in educational technology companies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I am also the University's primary coordinator of the Transnational Anti-racism in Education Research and Exchange Programme, a three-year, strategic international partnership with Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and Universidade do Estado da Bahia (UNEB), funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Education (CAPES), to support fellowships for Black and Indigenous Brazilian visiting students in the Faculty of Education. The initiative seeks to bring students and staff together to explore anti-racist struggles for more just futures in the UK and Brazil, two countries with distinct yet interrelated histories of coloniality, enslavement, abolition, and freedom movements.
My academic writing has also been published in scholarly journals, such as Feminist Studies, Feminist Theory, Educational Researcher, Race, Ethnicity & Education, 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, Fast Company, and The Huffington Post 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.
Academic Area/Links
- Knowledge, Power & Politics Research Group
Research Topics
- Political economy of education and international development
- Transnational feminisms
- Global raciality and anti-racism
Current Research Project(s)
- Silicon Futures, funded by Leverhulme Trust (2024-2025)
- Transnational Anti-racism in Education Research and Exchange Programme (with Dr. Haira Gandolfi, Dr. Amilcar Pereira, and Prof. Iris Verena Oliveira), funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Education (CAPES) (2024-2027)
Teaching
- Postgraduate
- Masters in Knowledge, Power & Politics
- Ph.D. in Education
- Undergraduate
- Tripos in Education
Prospective Ph.D. Students
Kathryn is accepting applications for doctoral students with a strong background in critical social theories, particularly feminist and race theories, to start their studies in October 2025.
It is not necessary to send her an email before naming her as a prospective supervisor in your application, although you are welcome to. She is on research leave, and 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.
Principal and Recent Publications
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.
