Dr Sarah Richardson

Executive Director of Asia Education Foundation

Dr Sarah Richardson (Australian, British, Irish) is an international education expert, with 30 years’ experience in international education around the world. Her work has encompassed teaching, research and leadership. She has lived in four countries and worked in many more, and has degrees from universities in three countries.

Prior to joining AEF, Sarah was a Research Director at the Australian Council for Educational Research, including as Research Director in the India and UK offices, and as Deputy CEO of ACER UK. Sarah lived in Delhi for three years and worked extensively across the Indian sub-continent. She also led a number of research projects investigating university mobility and research collaboration across APEC economies, including running a workshop for international stakeholders at the APEC meeting in Peru in 2016.

Sarah is passionate about supporting students to enhance their global competence. Her PhD focused cosmopolitan education – looking into the extent to which local and international students at Australian universities could be supported to engage with each other and to develop intercultural understanding. A book based on her thesis was published by Routledge in 2016 and has subsequently been translated into Farsi.

Sarah has extensive experience leading large, globally dispersed and diverse multicultural teams to deliver projects across the world. Just prior to joining AEF she was coordinating support for teams in 92 countries as part of her role in the PISA 2025 project. She is also a highly skilled researcher and evaluator, having led teams to implement research on educational topics as diverse as policy, assessment, curriculum, teacher training and graduate pathways.

Sarah commenced her position as AEF Executive Director in May 2023.