This Sussex Development Lecture by Dr Kathryn Moeller, is part of the series on Power, Politics and Hope. The lecture will examine the political economy of schooling during Covid-19. It draws from a co-authored chapter from the forthcoming manuscript, Silicon Futures: How Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists are Influencing Education around the World.

It brings together the theoretical frameworks of disaster capitalism (Klein, 2007) and educational capitalisation (Moeller et. al., 2024) to ask: who profited from public money during the pandemic, and how did local, state, and federal level politics and policies shape the terrain of profit from new educational technologies (edtech)?
Situated within a broader analysis of the global financial politics of schooling during this conjunctural moment, this four-year, mixed-methods case study focuses on Chicago Public Schools in Chicago, Illinois and Orange County Public Schools in Orlando, Florida, two of the US’s top 10 largest school districts, with majority Black and Latinx students.
After examining the historical currents and foundations that led to this conjunctural moment of the Covid-19 pandemic, the presentation first examines how the districts and teachers’ unions managed this crisis, to understand how their responses shaped opportunities for profit. Second, it looks at how these districts educated during the crisis through a look at the existing platforms they employed and edtech companies with whom they contracted. Third, it jumps scale to an industry level, exploring how for-profit investors invested during the height of the pandemic, the investment bubble and crash that ensued, and how, and to what extent companies and investors profited from public money. Lastly, it looks at what has happened as the “free money went away,” and considers attempts to push for democratic accountability and transparency to reign in private profit from public resources, looking towards hope for the future.
Co-authors of the chapter the lecture draws from are Kathryn Moeller, Klint Kanopka, Tyler Hook, María Fernanda Rodriguez, Shahnaaz Khan, Sonya Smyslova, and Mariam Sedighi.
Speaker
Kathryn Moeller is a critical feminist scholar, educator and author. Her interdisciplinary, ethnographic scholarship examines the relationships between capitalism, education, and international development through critical feminist, race, sociological, and political economic approaches.
She is 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. She is 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.
She is 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.
Dr Moeller’s 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.
In addition to academic writing, Dr Moeller has written essays for The New Yorker, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Fast Company, and The Huffington Post and appeared on BBC’s Business Daily, NPR’s Marketplace, Wisconsin Public Radio’s Central Time, Northeast Public Radio’s 51%, among other programmes.
Chair
Professor Mario Novelli, Centre for International Education (CIE), University of Sussex
How to watch
You can register to attend in person or watch online on Zoom.
Accessibility
This event will take place in the IDS Convening Space which is on the 1st floor of the IDS Building. If you need to use a lift then press floor 1A.
If you have any accessibility issues then contact [email protected]