Dr. Emma Harden-Wolfson
- Higher education policy
- The new geopolitics of higher education
- Comparative and international higher education
- Internationalization of higher education
- Higher education in Central Asia
- International research collaborations
- Right to higher education
- Higher education leadership
- Theories of system and institutional change, policy change / policy processes
- Qualitative methods
Dr Emma Harden-Wolfson is an international and comparative higher education policy specialist with regional specializations in Central Asia, Canada, Europe, and Latin America. Over the past two decades, Emma has worked in higher education research, teaching, policy analysis, consultancy, and university administration across four continents. She is Vice President of the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education, an Advisory Board member for the World Access to Higher Education Network and Associate Editor of the journal Studies in Higher Education.
Emma’s research is grounded in a commitment to understanding and shaping higher education policy through critical, comparative, and equity-focused perspectives. She researches the intersections between the policy process and lived experiences, focusing on the actors who are leading change in education policy. Through her research, Emma explores how and why higher education policy change happens across contexts, the consequences of educational policy change, and how to address the historic barriers and current challenges to equity in higher education policy. She aims to generate actionable, policy-relevant knowledge that bridges academic and practitioner communities.
Prior to joining McGill in 2023, Emma was Head of Research and Foresight at UNESCO’s International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean where she led research on the right to higher education, digital transformations, artificial intelligence, student mobility, and the futures of higher education.
Some of Emma’s recent funded research projects include:
Taking a social justice informed rights-based approach, this project investigates how students from equity deserving groups in Latin America and the Caribbean can be better supported in higher education from a policy perspective.
Funding: McGill Social Sciences and Humanities Development Grants Program (2025); McBurney Fellowship (for a graduate student) (2025).
This project addresses the gap in understanding firsthand how students in Kazakhstan are experiencing and making sense of global issues such as the climate crisis and war/conflict under conditions of geopolitical change.
Funding: Government of Kazakhstan (2024-25)
This research is mapping post-pandemic policies impacting international higher education in Ontario and Quebec and analysing the effects of domestic and international (geo)political dynamics on international students in Canada.
Funding: McGill Social Sciences and Humanities Development Grants Program (2023-25)
Review of climate change education ambition in Central Asia
This study reviews the state of climate change education policy in four Central Asian countries to identify good practices and support preparation for school-level pilots of the new UNESCO Quality Standard on Green Schools.
Funding: UNESCO (2023-2024)
- PhD in Higher Education with Collaborative Specialization in Comparative & International Development Education, University of Toronto, Canada
Thesis: Responding to Major Institutional Change: The Fall of the Soviet Union and Higher Education in Central Asia - MBA in Higher Education Management, Institute of Education, University College London, UK
- MA (Hons) Russian Studies and History, University of Edinburgh, UK
These are a selection of recent or key articles and book chapters. Note that I published with the last name Sabzalieva until 2024.
- Harden-Wolfson, E., & Abdrasheva, D. (2025). Me and the world: A methodological exploration of university students’ perspectives on global issues through cellphilms. International Journal of Educational Research, 134, 1–12.
- Harden-Wolfson, E., Hutcheson, S., & Zhang, Y. (2025). Representing the Problem of (Un)Ethical Practices in Canada’s Post-Pandemic International Student Policy Landscape. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 55(2), Article 2.
- Harden-Wolfson, E., & Shakirova, L. (2025). Current and Emerging Issues in Gender Equality in Education: What Does the Data Tell Us? In A. Kuzhabekova, N. Durrani, & Z. Kataeva (Eds.), Gender and Education in Central Asia (pp. 47–75). Springer Nature Switzerland.
- Harden-Wolfson, E. (2024). Destruction, construction, reconstitution: The dynamics of structural reform and the creation of new higher education institutions in the former Soviet space. International Journal of Educational Research, 126, 102364.
- Moscovitz, H., & Sabzalieva, E. (equal co-authors). (2023). Conceptualising the new geopolitics of higher education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 21(2), 149–165. Full-length article as part of co-edited special issue, The new geopolitics of higher education.
- Sabzalieva, E., El Masri, A., Joshi, A., Laufer, M., Trilokekar, R. D., & Haas, C. (2022). Ideal immigrants in name only? Shifting constructions and divergent discourses on the international student-immigration policy nexus in Australia, Canada, and Germany. Policy Reviews in Higher Education, 6(2), 178-204.
- Sabzalieva, E. (2022). Surviving a crisis: Transformation, adaptation, and resistance in higher education. Higher Education Governance & Policy, [open access] 3(1), 1-15.
- El Masri, A., & Sabzalieva, E. (equal co-authors). (2020). Dealing with disruption, rethinking recovery: Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in higher education. Policy Design and Practice [open access], 3(3), 312-333.
- Sá, C. M., & Sabzalieva, E. (2018). Scientific nationalism in a globalizing world. In B. Cantwell, H. Coates, & R. King (Eds.), Handbook on the Politics of Higher Education (pp. 149–166). Edward Elgar.
- Sá, C. M., & Sabzalieva, E. (2018). The politics of the great brain race: Public policy and international student recruitment in Australia, Canada, England and the USA. Higher Education, 75(2), 231–253.
