Íris Alves dos Santos

My current work focuses on the dynamics of the global governance of education, more specifically, my project analysis how intergovernmental organizations, namely the EU, OECD, and UNESCO use the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to create strategic crisis narratives in education. It explores how these narratives are used to legitimise these organizations’ roles, push certain education policies, bring new players into education development and create promissory visions of the future of education.

My research interests are on education policymaking, the dynamics of global-national-local networks of actors involved in the global governance of education, comparative education and cooperation for education development, including the work of international organisations. In my research I use complexity thinking as my onto-epistemic standpoint to aggregate diversified theories, which offer complementary angles to the analysis of societal phenomena related with power struggles, knowledge production, expertise influence, and politics of education.

Santos, Í., Pekkola, E. & Kontio, H. (Eds.) (2025). International Organisations Inside Out: Professional, Organisational and Contextual Realities of Global Education Development. Brill

Santos, Í. & Silova, I. (2025). From Finland to the world: interrogating the global learning crisis. Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education. DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2025.2567656

Santos, Í. & Pekkola, E. (2023). Policy entrepreneurs in the global education complex: The case of Finnish education experts working in international organisations. International Journal of Education Development, 98. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2023.102749

Volmari, S; Kauko, J., Anturaniemi, J., Santos, Í. (2022). Evidence and expert power in Finnish education policy making: the National Core Curriculum Reform. In B., Karseth, K., Sivesind & G. Steiner-Khamsi (Eds.). Evidence and Expertise in Nordic Education Policies: A Comparative Network Analysis from the Nordic Region (pp. 115-148). Palgrave Macmillan. (Open access: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-91959-7)

Baek, C., Tiplic, D. & Santos, Í. (2022). Evidence-based policymaking in Nordic Countries: Different settings, different practices?. In B., Karseth, K., Sivesind & G. Steiner-Khamsi (Eds.). Evidence and Expertise in Nordic Education Policies: A Comparative Network Analysis from the Nordic Region (pp. 253-280). Palgrave Macmillan. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-91959-7

Santos, Í. (2022). Externalisations in the Portuguese Parliament and Print Media: A complexity approach to education policymaking processes [Published doctoral thesis]. Faculty of Education and Culture, University of Tampere, Finland. https://trepo.tuni.fi/handle/10024/137570

Santos, Í., Carvalho, L. M., & Melo, B. P. (2022). The media’s role in shaping public opinion on education: A thematic and frame analysis of externalisation to world situations in the Portuguese media. Research in Comparative and International and Education. doi/full/10.1177/17454999211057753

Santos, Í. & Centeno, V. G. (2021). Inspirations from abroad: the impact of PISA on countries’ Choice of reference societies in education. Compare: A journal of Comparative and International Education. doi/full/10.1080/03057925.2021.1906206

Santos, Í. (2021). Epistemic work in Portuguese parliamentary education debates: Externalisation to world situations as a source of epistemic capital. European Educational Research Journal. doi/full/10.1177/1474904121990474

Santos, Í. & Kauko, J. (2020). Externalisations in the Portuguese parliament: analysing power struggles and (de-)legitimation with Multiple Streams Approach. Journal of Education Policy. doi/full/10.1080/02680939.2020.1784465.