A few things have come together over the past few months that feel less like separate announcements and more like a single shift in trajectory. So here’s the update.
I’ve been appointed a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, affiliated with the Center for Universal Education and the Global Economy and Development program. This grows out of my work on the global task force that produced the report A New Direction for Students in an AI World: Prosper, Prepare, Protect. I participated in the meetings, provided feedback on the emerging draft, and have been presenting about the findings on behalf of Brookings since its release. A huge shout-out to Rebecca Winthrop and Mary Burns for leading the work, and to Rebecca in particular for her support.
I’ve also received a Nehru Fulbright Fellowship to study generative AI and Indian education. The basic argument: the dominant narratives about AI in education come almost entirely from Silicon Valley, built on assumptions that flatten cultural difference and treat AI’s value as something inherent in the technology rather than in how it actually gets used. India is a powerful counter-case… 300 million students, massive linguistic and economic diversity, and AI adoption already spilling out of formal classrooms into WhatsApp groups, family conversations, and vocational centers. Innovation and creativity are happening in the Global South, and I want to document it. I’ll be building on long-standing relationships with Azim Premji University & Foundation and Quest Alliance across three extended trips over the next couple of years.
And finally, I’m taking a slightly different role within the Learning Engineering Institute, stepping down from the Director role to that of an Innovation Fellow. I love the people at LEI and look forward to working with them going forward, albeit in a different role.
If there’s a thread connecting all three, it’s that of coming home. Coming home to being, primarily, a scholar, a researcher, and writer. The Brookings Fellowship, the Fulbright, the new role at LEI… all point in that one direction – that of freeing up my time to do more thinking, writing, and traveling. Less admin, more doing. Exciting stuff.