Ngaire Woods

Professor Ngaire Woods is the founding Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government and Professor of Global Economic Governance at Oxford University. Her research focuses on how to enhance the governance of organizations, the challenges of globalization, global development, and the role of international institutions and global economic governance.

She founded the Global Economic Governance Program at Oxford University, and co-founded (with Robert O. Keohane) the Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellowship program. She led the creation of the Blavatnik School of Government.

Ngaire serves on the boards of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, the Stephen A. Schwarzman Education Foundation, and L’Institut National du Service Public. She is an Independent Non-Executive Director at Rio Tinto and a member of the Alfred Landecker Foundation’s Governing Council. She sits on advisory boards of the Centre for Global Development, the African Leadership Institute, the School of Management and Public Policy at Tsinghua University, and the Nelson Mandela School of Public Policy at Cape Town University. She is an Expert Advisor to the Australian Government’s Strengthening Democracy Taskforce and Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Complex Risks. She is an honorary governor of the Ditchley Foundation.

Previously, she served on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s International Advisory Panel, as a Non-Executive Director on the Arup Global Group Board and on the Board of the Center for International Governance Innovation and the Van Leer Foundation. From 2016–18, she was Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Values, Technology and Governance. She has also served as a member of the IMF European Regional Advisory Group, and as an Advisor to the IMF Board, to the Government of Oman’s Vision 2040, to the African Development Bank, to the UNDP’s Human Development Report, and to the Commonwealth Heads of Government, and to the UK Government’s Department for International Trade. She was a member of the G20 High Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, and of the Lancet Commission on COVID-19.

Ngaire Woods has published extensively on international institutions, the global economy, globalization, and governance, including the following books: The Politics of Global Regulation (with Walter Mattli, Oxford University Press, 2009), Networks of Influence? Developing Countries in a Networked Global Order (with Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, Oxford University Press, 2009), The Globalizers: the IMF, the World Bank and their Borrowers (Cornell University Press, 2006), Exporting Good Governance: Temptations and Challenges in Canada’s Aid Program (with Jennifer Welsh, Laurier University Press, 2007), and Making Self-Regulation Effective in Developing Countries (with Dana Brown, Oxford University Press, 2007). She has previously published The Political Economy of Globalization (Macmillan, 2000), Inequality, Globalization and World Politics (with Andrew Hurrell: Oxford University Press, 1999) and Explaining International Relations since 1945 (Oxford University Press, 1996). She has published numerous articles on international institutions, globalization, and governance. She has also presented numerous documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Two.

She was educated at Auckland University (BA in economics, LLB Hons in law). She studied at Balliol College, Oxford as a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar, completing an MPhil (with Distinction) and then DPhil (in 1992) in International Relations. She won a Junior Research Fellowship at New College, Oxford (1990-1992) and subsequently taught at Harvard University (Government Department) before taking up her Fellowship at University College, Oxford and academic roles at Oxford University.

Ngaire Woods was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2018 New Year's Honors for services to Higher Education and Public Policy. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts.