Karishma Desai

Tumultuous times call for alignment & collective action. As such, I am honored to be nominated to join the Board of Directors of the Comparative International Education Society for the 2025-2028 term.

My research draws on critical feminist theories to examine the politics of knowledge production and the formation of gendered childhoods within circuits of international development. My engagement with critical theory and ethnographic research has illuminated how careful attention to complex politics at multiple scales is essential.

And thus, as repression intensifies globally, I hope for a Comparative and International Education Society that remains steadfastly committed to: critical inquiry, engagement with contemporary geopolitics, and thoughtful multidisciplinary collaboration and action. I am eager to join the CIES leadership body in this moment where we think collectively and creatively, designing new pathways and possibilities for a more robust, lively, and active CIES community.

I joined CIES in the first year of graduate studies in 2010, and have increased my involvement and leadership, most recently as one of the founding co-chairs of the newly established Gender Justice SIG. In this leadership capacity, I had the opportunity to co-create the vision and mission of the SIG which focused on building a broad membership of gender justice comparative education scholars and practitioners that reflects the gender, sexual, and racial diversity in the field and that actively works to engage and collaborate with scholars, movements, and practitioners from the global South and minoritized communities in the global North as leaders and members. We had three key commitments in building the SIG: (1) foster connections between the SIG and the wide networks of feminist movements and gender justice activists in education; (2) prioritize the development of a robust feminist mentoring network; and (3) cultivate community and rigorous dialogue about gender justice praxis.

Taking up a CIES wide leadership capacity, I hope to further these critical & timely goals of academic freedom, democratic knowledge production, and multidisciplinary collaboration.