Kevin Watkins is Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Global Economic Governance Programme. He is currently the Executive Director of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).  Previously, he was nonresident senior fellow with the Center for Universal Education at Brookings. Before that he was the director and lead author of UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report – an annual report which examines progress towards internationally agreed goals in education.

From 2004-2008, Kevin was Director of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report Office. He was lead author of three Human Development Reports including the 2008/2009 report on climate change. Prior to joining the UN, Kevin was Head of Research at Oxfam, where he worked for thirteen years on a wide range of issues, including African debt, international trade, education and health policy. He was author of Oxfam’s Education Report (2000) and Rigged Rules and Double Standards (2003) – an analysis of international trade rules. Kevin has written extensively on a wide range of international development issues and is a regular contributor to a number of newspapers.

Kevin is a board member of the Center for Global Development, UNICEF’s Innocenti Center and the Journal of International Development. He holds a PhD from the University of Oxford, with a concentration in modern Indian history and economics.