Janet Ilieva

Janet Ilieva is founder and director of research consultancy Education Insight, having previously worked for the British Council and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. She is an expert on global student mobility flows and transnational education. As an economics student in Bulgaria in the 1990s – in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Communist regime there – she used the newly established British Council Resource Centres in the country to access textbooks in the English language and explore her subject. Janet eventually moved to the UK to complete a PhD, beginning what would become a career-long engagement with international student mobility. Her postdoctoral career path took her to the British Council, leading our work on higher education research and market intelligence, before joining the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in May 2013 as head of the HEFCE Observatory. She went on to establish Education Insight as an independent research consultant.  

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In this interview, Janet takes us from her childhood in Bulgaria, through her time as an international PhD student in the UK, to her career as an expert on education research and international student mobility – including several years spent working for the British Council and realising her ‘childhood aspirations to experience the world’.  

She references the involvement of the British Council in the development of English language schools in Bulgaria during the Cold War and reflects on the influence of the British Council Resource Centres that were established in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Communism.

As an economics student in the early to mid-1990s, it was these resource centres that provided Janet and her peers with English language textbooks that allowed her to ‘find out what economics was all about’ – at a time of political change and economic transition in the country.  

Shaped by a strong personal conviction in the importance of education for sustainable development, Janet explains how she went on to do a PhD in Economics in the UK. This prompted a career-shaping research fascination with international student mobility and a deeply rooted belief in the positive role that this plays in building international connections and trust. With her research interests piqued by the Higher Education Statistics Agency data on higher education in the UK and the prominent role international students play in the UK higher education system, Janet explains how she saw the opportunity to work for the British Council in 2004 as ‘too good to miss’.

Reflecting on her own childhood and her personal familiarity with the work of the British Council in reaching across the East-West divide in Europe during the Cold War, Janet articulates the satisfaction and professional curiosity she felt at this point in her career. She was now actively involved in initiatives aimed at building bridges between UK and other countries – she was ‘part of that bridge’, using education as a vehicle to make connections and build international relationships.  

Citing the example of a global education dialogue convened by the British Council in Hong Kong in 2012, Janet references the unique convening power of our organisation in being able to bring UK and international stakeholders together around pertinent topics for the education sector.

She argues that this capacity is the result of the high level of trust that the British Council has been able to build with local stakeholders – this is what we ‘bring to the table’, she suggests. She stresses the value of being able to sustain dialogue between people of different countries, regardless of changes in the geo-political or economic landscape.

It is these people-people connections that prevail over time, Janet argues, and this is what generates the trust that enables the British Council to succeed. 

Janet closes the interview by reflecting on the high levels of conflict and instability in the world, arguing that the language of geopolitics today has uncomfortable echoes of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ Cold War world in which she grew up.

In this context, she reiterates the importance of the role played by international organisations that promote people-to-people connections and promote language learning and intercultural fluency – an asset she fears is in diminishing supply currently. She calls on the British Council to continue its efforts over the years ahead, repeating her belief in the importance of building trust for the international cooperation that is required to secure a more sustainable future.